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AUTHOR: 


WILKINSON,  JAMES 
JOHN  GARTH 


TITLE: 


ON  HUMAN  SCIENCE, 
GOOD  AND  EVIL ... 

PLACE: 

PHILADELPHIA 

DA  TE : 

1876 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 

BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARGET 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


Master  Negative  # 


^<^-8oM-1i 


J938.94 
Sw33S4 


Wilkinson,  Jrjnos  John  Garth,  1812-1899. 

On  human  science,  good  and  evil,  and'its 
works;  and  on  divine  revelation  and  its  works 
and  sciences.  Sy   James  John  Garth  Wilkinson 
Philadelphia;  J,'  B.  Lippincott  &  co..  1876. 

xxi,  590  p.  22-^, 


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ON  HUMAN  SCIENCE 


AND 


DIVINE    REVELATION, 


ON 


HUMAN   SCIENCE, 


GOOD  AND  EVIL, 


AND  ITS  WORKS; 


AND  ON 


DIVINE    REVELATION 


AND  ITS  WORKS  AND  SCIENCES. 


BY 


JAMES  JOHN  GARTH  WILKINSON 

AUTHOR   or   "the   HUMAN    BODY,    AND   ITS   CONNECTION  WITH   MAN,* 


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J.  B-.L^PPINCOTT   &  CO. 

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PBEFACE. 

rr^HE  present  treatise  was  commenced  in  order  to 
furnish  to  the  public  mind  the  Author  s  testi- 
mony and  convictions  concerning  what  is  called 
Vivisection.  The  subject  has  engaged  his  attention 
since  his  youth,  and  one  firm  opinion,  of  its  useless- 
ness,  and  its  evils,  has  held  him  since  his  first 
perceptions  of  physiological  truth.  The  determina- 
tion of  his  heart  and  intellect  against  it  has  grown 
with  his  growth  and  strengthened  with  his  strength. 
He  has  written  upon  it  from  time  to  time.  And 
now,  when  a  great  public  opinion  is  rising  by  his 
side,  he  has  been  compelled  to  put  forth  all  his 
strength  as  one  combatant  in  the  cause  of  common 
humanity,  and  of  common  science. 

There  are  many  w^orkers  in  the  cause  in  all 
civilized  countries,  and  he  desires  to  be  in  their 
ranks  so  far  as  they  allow.  But  he  has  perceived 
that  the  policy  of  the  cause,  and  its  conduct,  are  not 
always  staked  upon  the  safest  issues,  or  led  from 
principles  that  can   conquer.      The  saving  of  pain 


VI 


PREFACE, 


to  God  s  creatures,  what  is  called  ''  the  economy  of 
pain,"  is  a  good  object,  but  not  a  sufficiently  com- 
plete policy  to  fight  under  ;  the  agony  which  cruel 
practices     cause    to    one's    own    sensibility,    is    a 
powerful  motive,  but  not  a  public  plea  :    you  cannot 
declare  war  against  a  system  because  it  makes  you 
uncomfortable,  or  even  miserable.     Therefore  he  has 
felt  that  other   issues   and  principles    are    needed. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington's  advice.  Do  not  make  a 
little  war,  is  applicable  to  internal  conflicts  against 
evil    in  society.      For    little   wars    have  no  back- 
ground of  resources,  they  do  not  know  the  strength 
of  the  enemy,  and  the  peace  that  follows  them  for 
the  most  part  leaves  the  evil  in  dispute  nearly  its 
whole  territory;  perhaps  is  purchased  by  guaran- 
teeing the  evil  by  treaty ;    and  leaves  the  case  of 
offence  more  difficult  of  attack  by  reason  of  conces- 
sion to  wrong  premises.     On  the  question  we  are 
considering,  we  want  deep  foundations  of  peace,  and 
must  put  forth  high  powers  to  attain  them.     Alios 
ad  prcelium  ire  videas,  Chattos  ad  helium. 

This  issue  has  been  attempted  in  the  following 
pages,  and  the  whole  array  of  reasons  within  the 
writers  ken  has  been  brought  into  the  struggle. 
For  the  towering  pretensions  of  science  and  service 
embodied  in  old  institutions  and  practices,  and  now 
represented  by  extremely  able  men,  are  too  massive 
a  phalanx  to  be  opposed  successfully  on  the  battle- 


FREFACE. 


vu 


field  of  an  uneducated  Parliament  and  people,  by 
humane  sentiments  and  generous  horrors  :  it  is  as 
unequal  a  contest  as  that  of  the  naked  Britons  with 
Caesar  and  his  legions  when  they  came  determined 
to  land  upon  our  shores.  More  than  Roman  must 
meet  Roman,  or  mere  human  kindness  will  be 
beaten,  and  bleed  afresh  upon  the  field. 

More  than  Roman  has  come,  and  He  is  on  our 
side. 

The  writer  has  pleaded  the  ruin  of  physiological 
science,  and  the  corruption  of  medical  art,  as  honest 
reasons  in  the  case ;  and  thus  has  assailed  Viola- 
TiONiSM  from  its  own  strategical  centre.  He  has 
named  this  realm  of  evil,  Violationism,  because 
Vivisection  is  the  fair  name  which  the  enemy  gives 
it,  and  this  by  no  means  characterizes  its  deeds. 
He  has  demonstrated  that  human  sciences  are  im- 
possible on  this  ground,  and  that  diabolical  sciences 
are  not  permissible  here.  He  has  appealed  to  the 
people  and  to  Parliament  to  recognize  and  settle 
this  fact. 

Moreover  he  has  found,  on  exploring  the  roots  of 
the  evil,  that  you  soon  come  to  avowed  materialism 
as  a  creed  of  procedure,  and  to  rights  of  materialism 
disavowing  all  allegiance  to  conscience,  to  mercy, 
and  to  God.  Here  is  a  new  host  which  requires  to 
be  encountered. 

The  chieftains  of  this  host,  in  the  British  Asso- 


VUl 


PREFACE, 


ciation,  have  summoned  the  Christian  religion  to 
their  tent,  and  ordered  it  to  prepare  itself  for  scien- 
tific examination ;  to  submit  its  life  to  experimental 
material  science,  and  to  add  itself,  so  far  as  it  passes 
muster,  to  the  atheistical  forces. 

This  has  given  the  writer  room  to  bring  forth 
religion  in  a  set  of  general  statements.  He  has  first 
shown  a  new  science  which  claims  the  throne  of  the 
human  mind  in  that  department,  and  on  which  reli 
gion  can  be  based  materially.  This  science  is  of  the 
divine  provision,  and  the  commencement  of  it  has 
been  given  to  mankind  by  the  illumination  of 
Swedenborg.  It  occupies  and  constitutes  the  very 
ground  under  the  feet  of  the  violational  army. 

That  science,  in  its  harmonies,  is  filled  with  the 
doctrines  of  a  new  religion,  a  new  revelation,  and 
hereby  a  new  personal  chieftain  appears  upon  the 
field,  even  Jesus  Christ,  the  Lord  of  human  kind- 
ness, but  also  the  warrior,  and  the  judge  of  the 
earth.  The  doctrines  alluded  to,  rationally  and  spiri- 
tually occupy  an  inner  realm  above  science,  but 
corresponding  to  science,  a  region  into  which  viola- 
tionism  and  materialism  cannot  come,  and  by  the 
pressure  of  their  truths  and  principles,  the  higher 
faculties  of  the  mind  are  disciplined  and  embattled 
against  the  perversions  of  the  lower  sphere. 

The  process  assails  the  evils  under  consideration, 
by  solid  organic  reasons  from  above,  and  clears  the 


J 


PREFACE, 


IX 


upper  human  air.  It  is  a  process  of  general  educa- 
tion in  the  truths  of  the  New  Church ;  and  in  the 
knowledges  and  sciences  flowing  from  these.  Its 
end  is,  the  purification  of  the  natural  life,  and  there- 
fore of  the  whole  mind,  by  obedience  to  revealed 
rational  law. 

The  opportunity  created  by  the  British  Associa- 
tion, has  been  freely  taken,  to  give  from  the  writer  s 
point  of  view,  as  from  a  mind  deeply  interested  in 
physiology  and  medicine,  and  in  Society  in  its  re- 
lations therewith,  a  passing  statement  of  most  of  the 
subjects  contained  in  the  writings  of  Swedenborg; 
but  always  with  the  object  of  placing  them  opposite 
to  the  scientific  mind,  for  the  repression  of  great  and 
cruel  evils,  and  in  order  that  the  truths  of  love  may 
at  last  prevail.  This  ruling  desire  will  conciliate 
the  reader  to  the  constant  recurrence  to  painful 
topics  of  the  hour,  and  to  the  bending  round  of  the 
discourse,  wherever  it  begins,  to  practical  aims, 
which  are  the  basis  and  justification  of  the  whole 

treatise. 

The  Author  commends  the  theme,  under  its  novel 
mode  of  statement,  especially  to  the  attention  of  the 
Church  universal,  and  whilst  inviting  all  religious 
minds  to  a  serious  study  of  Swedenborg,  he  pleads 
to  the  whole  Church  of  Christ,  that  if  they  attain 
the  truths  communicated  in  that  Author,  and  apply 
them  to  the  regeneration  of  private  and  public  life, 


! 


I 


X  PREFACE, 

the  antagonism  of  science  will  cease,  the  evil  and 
false  sciences  will  disappear,  and  a  new  knowledge 
of  nature,  inconceivable  now,  will  spring  out  of  the 
ground  of  the  natural  mind. 

He  commends  the  same  truths  to  his  own  pro- 
fession; for  they  are  fountains  of  healing.  And 
though  he  has  said  hard  things  of  that  profession, 
it  is  because  he  loves  it  well,  and  will  love  it  to 
the  end. 

He  commends  the  light  of  Swedenborgs  writ- 
ings to  honest  statesmen.  No  more  difficult  or 
delicate  subjects  can  occupy  the  attention  of  states- 
men, than  the  needful  limitations  of  art  and  science 
as  they  press  into  Temporal  Power.  Nothing  can 
injure  the  State  more  than  allowing  false  admissions 
to  power  in  this  direction.  Nothing  is  more 
difficult  to  cast  out  than  the  foreign  virus  of  power 
if  once  it  penetrates  into  homes,  consciences,  and 
affections,  and  is  there  confirmed  by  the  intimate 
pressure  of  house-to-house  professional  visitation. 
This  has  been  exemplified  in  the  action  of  priest- 
hoods; it  is  felt  to-day  in  the  influence  of  other 
callings.  Wise  and  extended  statutes  of  mortmain, 
thrown  as  shields  over  the  weakness  of  human  fear, 
are  needed  to  ensure  and  protect  public  liberty 
threatened  in  many  pleaded  interests  of  life  and 
death. 

The  truths  brought  forward  in  this  book  are  com- 


PREFACE, 


XI 


mended  to  legislators;  for  those  truths  are  themselves 
the  highest  laws,  and  the  fountains  of  laws.  They 
nerve  the  mind  with  power  to  embrace  in  action  the 
several  forces  which  combat  on  the  side  of  public 
good.  Especially  in  regard  to  science  they  help 
towards  the  conception  of  a  needed  Reform  Bill  of 
the  future.  There  are  evils,  such  as  the  vaccination 
laws,  which  consist  of  so  great  a  number  of  small 
wrongs,  that  it  is  difficult  to  seize  them,  and  ter- 
minate their  reign :  the  sum  of  the  evil  is  worldwide, 
and  the  volume  and  cloud  of  it  is  immense,  but  the 
germs  and  particles  are  nearly  invisible,  and  always 
fugacious,  first  to  the  professional,  and  then  to  the 
public  mind :  like  swarms  of  poisonous  flies  they  are 
more  difficult  to  clear  off  than  a  ''  plague  of  lions  " 
would  be.  The  truths  of  the  New  Church,  which 
regard  society  as  one,  and  its  wrongs  as  one,  group 
these  winged  evils  with  their  similars,  and  fixing 
them  to  a  common  ground,  proceed  to  exterminate 
them  in  their  principles,  and  to  clear  the  social  world 
of  their  stings.  This  can  be  done  by  Bills  consider- 
ing several  such  subjects  at  once ;  and  by  a  general 
legislative  sweep  upon  all  the  cases  in  which  false 
science  has  attained  to  power;  especial  reference 
being  had  to  science  itself,  to  see  that  it  be  perfectly 
free,  in  being  perfectly  subordinate  to  the  greater 
freedom  of  mankind,  and  amenable  to  penal  law  to 
keep  it  pure.     For  wherever  an  evil  cannot  be  got  at 


I 


i 


Xll 


PREFACE, 


by  reason  of  its  subtlety  and  voluble  pretexts,  the 
policy  is  to  put  it  in  dock  with  other  evils,  to  gain  a 
mass  that  can  be  grasped,  and  then  to  use  upon  it 
the  plain  truths  which  dimension  of  enormity  calls 
forth.  The  ground  of  public  life,  first  cleared  and 
then  cultivated  by  the  truths  which  the  Church  now 
possesses,  will  thus  be  wholesome  and  good,  and  for 
the  farmers  of  future  society,  secure. 

June  3,  1876. 


CONTENTS 


PART  I. 


METHODS   OF  SCIENCE. 


I.  Good  and  evil  rule  in  the  Sciences, 
Evil  and  false  facts, 
Evil  and  false  Sciences,    . 
Evil  and  false  physiological  facts  and  Sciences, 
II.  The  rights  of  Science, 
The  place  of  Science, 
Wrong  ambitions  of  Science, 

III.  Vivisection  demonstrates  physiological  impotence 

IV.  The  path  of  Analogy, 

There  is  no  real  similarity  between  human  and 
animal  organs. 

How  do  living  forces  act?  or.  What  is  Life? 

There  is  no  real  similarity  between  the  organs 

and  parts  of  animals   opened  and    dissected 

alive,  and  the  corresponding  organs  and  parts 

in  animals  in  the  enjoyment  of  their  existence, 

V.  Kone  but  the  basest  analytical  facts  have  a  place  in 

the  Physiology  of  the  day, 
VI.  Egypt,  ....'■ 

The  present  range  of  violational  facts  fits  into  no 
system  of  Truth,  and  cannot  be  appropriated  by 
the  Vivisectors:   it  will  be  taken  irom  them," 


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XIV 


CONTENTS. 


and  put  to   use  by  those  who  renounce  their 
ways  as  being  evil,       .... 

There  are  similarities  between  this  black  art  of  the 
violationists  and  the  ancient  mysteries  of  Egypt, 

The  evil  heart  toward  Vivisection  has  being  grow- 
ing for  ages,  but  with  rapidity  in  the  latter  half 
of  this  century,  .... 

Plea  that  animals  are  automatons, 
VII.  Interests  of  Science,  .... 

The  interests  of  Science  are  pleaded, 
VIII.  Extension  and  decay  of  the  old  medicine,      . 

Vaccination,         .  .  .  •  • 

Lymph-poisoning,  .... 

Current  disregard  of  serious  physiological  truth,  . 
IX.  Decay  of  the  old  medicine — {continmd). 

Symptoms,  .  .  •  .  • 

X.  Extension  and  decay  of  the  old  surgery. 

The  influence  of  Vivisection  upon  surgery  is  and 
has  been  for  evil,  .... 

Surgery,  on  its  bad  side,  paralyzes  the  patient's 

rational  faculty,  .... 

XL  Evil  and  false  medicine  and  surgery,  and  their  rule 

by  fear,    ...••• 

An  evil  and  false  medicine  and  surgery  give 
wrong  hopes  and  a  base  love  of  the  bodily 
natural  life  to  mankind — they  are  a  vassal  of 
the  luxury  of  the  people. 

An  evil  and  false  medicine  and  surgery  fix  fear,    . 
XIL  The  circulation  of  evil,  .... 

The  violations  ruling  in  Scientism  are  closely  re- 
presented in  the  life  of  Professions, 
Xni.  Vivisection  corrupts  and  destroys  the  principles  of 

medical  and  surgical  education,  and  of  medical 

religion,  ....»♦ 

The  violation  of  life  by  Scientism  strikes  medicine 
more  than  the  other  arts  on  the  religious  side, 
and  injures  its  highest  life, 


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CONTENTS. 

XIV.  Vivisection  corrupts  and  hardens  the  non-medical 

public,  .  .  .  .  . 

Royal  Commissions,     .  .  . 

Wickedness  strangely  coincides  and  correlates 

with  wickedness  in  the  Physiology  of  Society, 
Violation  of  life  by  Scientism,  unless  nationally 

reprobated,  despoils  the  efforts  made  by  the 

benevolent  against  common  cruelty, 

XV.  Social  Physiology  by  instances, 

Biology  of  Vivisection, 
The  violation  of  animals  in  the  rites  of  Scientism 
threatens  public  order, 
XVI.  Violation  of  animals  destroys  organic  knowledf^e, 
Vivisection     prevents     any   organic    spiritual 
views  of  the  human  and  social  bodies  from 
coming  into  existence:   and  correlation,  not 
of  brute  forces,  but  of  hearts,  consciences, 
and  deeds,  from  being  thereby  discerned, 
The    present  so-called    human   physiologj'-,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  founded  upon  Vivisection, 
contains    no  direct  knowledge,  but  is  the 
inference  of  an  inference, 
XVII.  General  violations  ruling  in  Science, 
XVIII.  Evil  and  false  Infinites,     . 

Unlimited  ambitions  and  minds, 
XIX.  The  Cities  of  the  Plain,     . 

In  violational  Scientism,  obscenity  and  visible 
horror  touch  their  last  earthly  gratifications, 
XX.  Separations  in  Science, 

Science  requires  a  careful  study  to  separate  its 
better  nature  from  its  modern  pretensions, 
XXI.  The  single  eye  of  the  Sciences, 
XXII.  Justification  by  Science  alone. 

False  Science    complains  of  the  arrogance   of 
false  theology,  and  seeks  to  crush  it,  by  a 
corresponding  arrogance  of  its  own,  . 
XXIII.  Scientifics, 


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XVI 


CONTENTS. 


CONTENTS, 


xvii 


Vivisection,  including  human  vivisection,  which 
exists  "in  posse"  within  the  present  prac- 
tice, is  the  natural  end  of  the  evQ  and  false 
analytical  sciences,  and  of  the  evil  and  false 
analytical  philosophies,        .  .  , 

Analytics  without  uses  close  the  Sciences,  and 
violent  analytics  close  them  violently  and 
seal  them,  .... 

The  vessels  of  Life,     . 

The  rank  of  Analytics, 

Certainty  and  exactitude, 
XXrV.  Consummatio  Saeculi, 

The  consummation  of  the  Age  in  Scicntifics, 

Marks  of  Consummation, 

Protoplasm  and  development  "ex  se," 
XXV.  Modern  thought, 
XXVI.  The  Spirit  of  the  Age,    . 
XXVII.  Good  and  evil    rule    in    the  imaginations    of 
Science,      .  .  •  . 

The  imagination,  as  a  function  in   Science 
is  true,  or  false,  for  good,  or  for  evil, 
XXVIII.  A  New  State,    .... 

The  false  faith  that  any  absolute  and  final 
truth  can  be  discovered  by  Science  from  the 
changeful  phenomena  of  nature,  is  one  image 
and  result  of  its'  own  self-deification.  As 
also  is  the  faith  of  Science  in  its  own 
permanence.  As  also  again  is  the  postpone- 
ments of  religious  exactitude  called  theology, 
until  Science  has  attained  to  its  own  exacti- 
tude, complete,  .... 
XXIX.  Love  of  dominion  in  Scientism,  . 
XXX.  Science  as  Faculty  is  everlasting, 

There  is  also  a  tender  sense  in  which  Science 
is  and  will  be  permanent:  it  is  immortal  as 
man  is  immortal,     . 


PAGE 


81 


87 
89 
91 
93 
94 
94 
96 
97 
101 
103 

104 

104 
107 


107 
112 
116 


XXXL 
XXXIL 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 
XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 


117 


XXXVIII. 
XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLL 
XLII. 

XLIIL 

XLIV. 
XLV. 

XLVI. 

XLVII. 

XLVIII. 

XLIX. 

L. 

LL 

LIL 

LIIL 


PART  IL 

SWEDENBORG  AND  A  NEW  SCIENCE. 

Swedenborg,   .... 
The  Law  of  good  use  confronts  Scientism, 
The  Fire  of  Use  in  Science,     . 
Uses,  .... 

Correlation    of  Forces,  including  Love,  Will 

Mind,  .  .  .  • 

Correspondences:    Love,  their  point    of    de 

parture,       .... 
Public  limitations  of  Scientism, 

Nota  bene, 

The  selfhood. 
Science  is  essentially  dogmatic  and  doctrinal, 
Doctrines  [pressing    upon    Science:    a     new 

religion  claims  it, 
The  Incarnation  claims  the  Sciences  on   their 

own  grounds. 
The  Divine  Humanity, 
Positive     Theology    commences    in    Sweden 

borg.     The  Incarnation, 
The  Divine  Man  the  primary  object  of  the 

organic  Sciences, 
Swedenborg, 
Swedenborg  "founds  human    physiology — the 

Doctrine  of  Uses,    . 
The  Doctrine  of  Forms, 
Posture  and  position  of  organic  forms, 
The  Doctrine  of  Degrees, 
Spiritual  Influx,  .  .         '   • 

Spiritual  sight  opened, 
Personal  evidence  supreme, 
Illumination  of  Reason, 
The  prospects  of  Naturalism,  . 


PAGE 

120 
123 
125 
129 

134 

136 
140 
143 
144 
145 

147 

150 
155 

157 

163 
165 

166 

168 
172 
176 
178 
183 
186 
192 
197 


XVUl 


CONTENTS, 


CONTENTS, 


XIX 


Prevailing   contempt   of    human   experiment, 
and  of  the  powers  of  natural  substance, 
LIT.  The  future  of  human  Organology, 


PAGE 
201 

203 


LV. 


LVT. 


LVII. 
LVIII. 

LIX. 

LX. 

LXI. 

LXIL 

LXin. 

LXIV. 

LXV. 

LXYI. 

LXVII. 

LXVin. 

LXIX. 
LXX. 

LXXI. 

LXXII. 

LXXin. 


PAKT  III. 

A  NEW  CHURCH. 

The  Church  Militant  in  Science, 

Doctrines  are  necessary, 
The  ancient  Churches  enter  Science  and   com 

mand  Anthropology,   : 

Three  human  natures, 
Accord  of  Geology, 
Social  declension   coincident  in  this  world  and 

the  other,        .  •  •  . 

Individual  and  general  judgment  takes  place  in 

the  spiritual  world. 
The  Word  made  flesh. 
The  Doctrine  of  Ultimates, 
Swedenborg  a  rational  teacher  from  the  "Word, 
Correlations  of  Theology,  .  . 

Death  confirms  beliefs,  good  and  evil, 
Spiritual    Science    implies     spiritual  revelation 

of  its  God  and  its  world. 
Conceits  in  Scientism,  and  social  chaos  therefrom 
Spiritism,  .... 

Possession  and  superstition. 
The  first  Christian  Church, 
The  last  judgment  in  1757, 

The  English  under  judgment. 
Contemporary  History,    . 
Another  sign,      .... 
The  Word,  .... 

Theism,  .... 


208 
210 

214 
215 
221 

222 

226 
228 
233 
236 
240 
248 

250 
254 
257 
262 
268 
271 
275 
277 
281 
284 
285 


LXXIY.  Abstractions  put  aside, 
LXXV.  The  affections, 
LXXVI.  Divine  entrances  into  Science, 
LXXVII.  Analogy,    . 
LXXVIII.  Correspondency, 
LXXIX.  The  Word  conjoins  Heaven  and  Earth, 
LXXX.  The  Apocalypse  Kevealed, 
LXXXI.  The  authority  of  Swedenborg, 
LXXXII.  Human  imperfection  does  not  hinder, 
LXXXIII.  A  new  mind  from  Correspondences, 
LXXXIV.  Spiritual  creation  of  correlates, 
LXXXV.  Judgment  by  Correspondences, 
LXXXVI.  Transformation  and  transfiguration, 
LXXXVIL  The  laws  of   Nature    and   the  Kingdom  of 

God, 
LXXXVIII.  Evil  Forms  and  Events, 
LXX XIX.  'J  he  march  of  Ends, 

XC.  The  new  imagination  of  illuminated  reason, 
XCI.  Love  is  the  life  of  man  in  Science  also, 
XCII.  The  ruling  loves,       .  . 

XCIII.  Swedenborg  and  Fourier, 
XCIV.  Metaphysics, 
XCY.  Art, 

XCVI.  Genius  and  Insjiiration, 
XCVII.  Swedenborg  founds  a  new  Sanity, 
XCVIII.  Prayer  and  Miracle, 
The  new  medicine, 
XCIX.  Sources  against  prayer, 
C.  Permissions, 
CI.  Prayer  and  Influx, 
CII.  Woman  under  the  !N"ew  Church, 
cm.  The  new  education, 
CIV.  jSTew  centres  of  spiritual  life, 
CV.  The  gates  of  death  opened, 
CVI.  The  quickening  of  the  Ages, 
CVII.  Freedom  and  Freewill, 
CVIII.  Ecclesiasticisms,       .  . 


PAGE 

288 
292 
294 
298 
305 
306 
309 
311 
313 
315 
317 
321 
326 

331 
336 
338 
343 
346 
350 
353 
356 
358 
361 
362 
367 
369 
385 
388 
389 
391 
399 
409 
413 
417 
425 
426 


XX 


CONTENTS. 

CIX.  Cruelties, 
ex.  The  vastation  of  evU, 
CXI.  Physiology  on  good  and  evil, 
CXII.  Punishments  and  executioners, 
CXIII.  Slow  reception  of  truth, 
CXIV.  Respect  of  man, 
CXV.  Man's  place  in  nature, 

Organic  remorses, 
CXVI.  The  hells, 
CXVII.  Re-incarnation, 
CXVIII.  The  condemned  sermon, 
CXIX.  Good  and  evil  do  not  mix, 

CXX.  The  annihilation-theory  of  evil, 
CXXI.  Divine  influx, 
CXXII.  The  human  form  as  capacity  of  knowledge, 
CXXIII.  The  great  white  throne, 
CXXIV.  The  future  of  the  Church  and  of  Society, 


PAGE 

432 

437 

442 

446 

451 

452 

455 

463 

480 

489 

494 

496 

498 

499 

505 

513 

523 


/ 


CONTENTS. 


XXI 


PART  V. 


SUPPLEMENT. 


CXXXIV.  The  late  Royal  Commission  on  Vivisection, 
CXXXV.  Destruction  of  reason, 
CXXXVI.  Unalterable  by  prayer, 
CXXXVII.  The  catechism  of  the  gallows, 
CXXXVIII.  The  sacredness  of  forms  of  life, 


PAGE 

572 
577 
580 
580 
585 


PART  IV. 


A  NEW  AGE. 

CXXV.  Charity, 
CXXVI.  Love  and  immortality, 
CXXVII.  The  sexes, 
CXXVIII.  The  British  constitution, 
CXXIX.  Ducal  Saharas, 
CXXX.  The  New  Church  over  politics, 
CXXXI.  The  New  Church  over  the  passions, 
CXXXII.  The  New  Church  over  property, 
CXXXIII.  Summary, 


529 
538 
541 
546 
551 
553 
560 
566 
569 


i| 


I 


PAET  I. 
SCIENTIFIC   METHODS. 


I. 


GOOD   AND   EVIL   RULE    IN   THE   SCIENCES. 

Evil  and  False  Facts. — There  are  many  facts  which 
a  man  is  a  rascal  for  knowing;  such,  for  example, 
as  the  contents  of  the  private  letters  of  other  people;  or 
the  revelations  of  spy-holes  made  into  private  rooms ; 
that  is  to  say,  where  reasons  of  police  do  not  com- 
mand these  breaches  of  fellowship.  There  are  other 
facts  which  a  man  is  a  burglar  for  knowing;  namely, 
the  contents  of  strong  boxes  which  do  not  belong  to 
him ;  the  unpermitted  knowing  here  is  burglarious 
as  well  as  the  handling.  There  are  other  facts  which 
a  man  is  a  seducer  or  violator  for  knowing ;  facts 
multipliable  to  any  extent.  There  are  other  facts 
again  which  a  man  is  a  murderer  for  knowing,  such  as 
the  behaviour  of  human  beings  under  torture  or 
destruction  inflicted  by  himself ;  and  the  answerable 
feelings  and  experiences  called  up  by  these  proceed- 
ings in  his  own  breast.  Many  brigands  have  large 
knowledge  here.  And  then  also  there  are  abundant 
facts  which  a  man  is  a  demon  for  knowing  and  pro- 


II! 

I 


I 


:  ) 


|: 


t 


(! 


2      GOOD  AND  EVIL  RULE  IN  THE  SCIENCES, 

secuting;  sucli  as  his  own  poisonings  and  pollutions 
of  the  minds  and  hearts  of  others  ;  and  the  corruption 
of  life  which  is  the  consequence.     The  right  to  know 
these  things,  and  by  implication  the  right  to  know 
all  things,  not  as  police  agents,  but  as  truth -seekers, 
is  the   magna  clutrta  of  housebreaking   and  worse 
violence  applied  to  the  world  and  all  that  is  therein. 
JEvil  and  False  Sciences. — All  such  facts,  by  those 
who   commit  the   acts   that   make   them,   may   be 
arranged  and  digested  into  knowledge,  and  in  the 
greater  adepts  may  be  made,  and  are  made,  by  the 
working  of  the  mind,  into  apparent  sciences.      A 
peculiar  feature  of  these  sciences  is,  that  they  destroy 
the   quality   which   they   think   to   register.      The 
burglar  seizes  property,  but  in  his  hands  it  is  not 
property,  but  pillage,  and  is  not  the  means  to  ac- 
quiring property,  but  to  perpetuating  plunder.     The 
violator  seizes  love,  but  it  turns  to  death  of  love  in 
the  seizure.     The   coveted   thing,    whatever  it  be, 
loses  its  essence  when  the  lawless  lust  has  got  it. 
The  knowledofe  and  science  of  it  afterwards  are  but 
the  knowledge  and  science  of  its  opposites,  mistaken 
for  the  undebauched  facts.     In  short,  there  is  nothing 
acquired  by  unlawful  means,  that  is  not  evil  and  false 
in  the  knowing  as  well  as  in  the  keeping.     There 
is  nothinor  that  does  not  belie  the  terms  of  truth. 

At  the  same  time,  large  ranges  of  fact  and  ex- 
perience belong  to  these  realms  of  evil ;  and  if  any 
person  thinks  he  has  a  right  to  know  everything 
about  human  nature  at  first  hand,  he  can  know  end- 
less and  unique  things  by  criminal  means.  Nay,  he 
may  scheme  to  circumvent  criminality  by  wicked 
knowledge  in  his  own  breast.  He  may  plead,  as  an 
honest  ground  of  dishonesty,  "  Set  a  thief  to  catch  a 
thief,"  and  may  justify  his  thefts  by  this  result. 
There  is  much  justice  and  judgment  of  this  kind. 


GOOD  AND  EVIL  RULE  IN  THE  SCIENCES     3 

wicked  justice.  In  taking  its  outcome,  as  we  must 
do,  we  deny  its  principles.  The  knowledge  and 
science  here  implied  are  wrong  to  have  and  to  hold. 
No  matter  what  successes  they  lead  to  in  disem- 
bowelling villany  and  increasing  policemanship,  they 
are  bad  from  the  foundation. 

Evil  and  False  Physiological  Facts  and  Sciences, 
— We  have  seen  that  there  are  wicked  facts  and 
sciences,  innumerable  ones,  in  the  moral  and  social 
world.  Cruelty  to  others,  self-seeking  at  the  cost 
of  others, — in  a  word,  aggressive  selfishness,  is  one 
expression  of  them  all.  Exactly  parallel  with  these 
are  the  wicked  facts  and  sciences  elicited  by  cruelty 
to  the  lower  animals ;  by  cutting  them  up  alive ; 
by  poisoning  them  and  noting  the  symptoms  of  the 
poisoning;  by  burning  them  with  hot  irons;  by 
injecting  corruption  into  their  veins,  and  filling  them 
with  animalcules ;  and  by  countless  other  ways 
inherited  from  ancient,  and  aggravated  by  modern 
science;  e.g.,  wicked  science.  Whatever  benefits 
might  accrue,  whatever  seeming  property  of  know- 
ledge might  accrue,  from  such  deeds,  they  are  un- 
natural, abominable,  and,  save  for  legal  repression,  not 
to  be  named  among  Christians.  They  belong,  indeed, 
as  the  sequel  will  show,  to  ^^  that  city  which  spiri- 
tually is  called  Sodom  and  Egypt,  wherein  also  our 
Lord  was  crucified."  Mankind  has  no  right  to  them. 
They  are  hellish  facts ;  and  they  belong  not  to  life 
and  nature,  but  to  imposture,  death,  and  destruction  ; 
not  to  organization,  but  to  ruin ;  not  to  order,  but  to 
the  chaos  of  sin. 

With  no  intention  to  use  strong  terms  here,  they 
arise  in  the  subject ;  because  the  science  of  cruelty, 
and  the  cruelty  of  science,  are  not  brutal  or  bestial ; 
and  in  calm  analytics  brute  beasts  must  not  be 
insulted  by  the  application  of  their  innocent  adjec- 


I 


it 


1 1 


!t 


i( 


4      GOOD  AND  EVIL  RULE  IN  THE  SCIENCES, 

tive  to  cruel  men.  Devilish  and  hellish  are  the 
scientific  human  terms.  Cruelty  is  the  hard  sub- 
stratum of  the  infernal  pit,  which  common  sense 
tells  us  is  full  of  false  sciences,  and  of  abandoned 
means  of  possessing  them.  For  whatever  is  depraved 
in  man,  has  cruel  evil  for  its  heart,  and  lying  pre- 
texts for  the  breath  of  its  lungs ;  and  therefore  is 
hell  in  an  imaore.  But  animal  terms  do  not  suit 
these  conditions. 

No  demonstration  beyond  assertion  is  necessary, 
that  mankind  has  no  right  to  know  how  dogs  be- 
have with  their  spines  sawn  through,  or  how 
their  nerves  affect  their  muscles  and  vitals  when 
their  entrails  are  exposed,  and  their  bodies  skilfully 
mangled.  It  is  a  plain  fact  in  the  sight  of  God  and 
man  that  the  knowledge  and  the  doing  of  such  things 
are  abominable  and  unlawful,  and  that  they  are 
beyond  conception  hateful  to  all  simple  honest 
people.  There  is  not  an  undebauched  assembly  in 
the  world  that  would  not  trample  upon  a  man  if  he 
persisted  in  such  deeds  before  their  eyes  ;  for  they 
insult  and  defy  human  society.  There  is,  however, 
no  end  to  them  in  the  dens  of  evil  physiology.  If  a 
sawn  dog  drags  his  hind  legs  in  one  way,  what  will 
a  sawn  cat  do  under  similar  circumstances?  what 
will  a  sawn  elephant  do  ?  and  so  forth.  The  wealth 
of  facts  here  can  only  be  co-extensive  with  the  tor- 
ments of  the  entire  animal  creation  from  age  to  age. 
The  lust  of  that  wealth  would  grudge  the  shambles 
their  daily  prey  without  protracted  torture. 

But  why  stop  at  animals,  which  are  mere  analogies 
of  that  human  organism  which  is  the  great  problem 
to  be  solved.  The  reason  pushed  further,  of  direct 
knowledge  to  be  acquired,  needs  the  supreme  ex- 
periment of  cutting  up  living  men,  women  and 
children.      There  might  be  pretexts.      Take,  as  a 


THE  RIGHTS  OF  SCIENCE,  5 

commencement,  a  poor  idiot  or  a  baby.  They  would 
undoubtedly  yield  more  direct  results  to  evil  human 
physiology  than  animal  analogy  could  furnish.  ^'  The 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number "  versus 
the  shunning  of  wickedness  by  all,  might  plead 
strongly  for  human  vivisection.  What  sharp  light 
would  come  of  it!  What  fruitful  results  to  *'the 
healinof  art ! "  What  enthronement  of  science  over 
weak  sentiment!  What  preparation  for  handling 
unprofessional  mankind  with  official  fingers  !  Only 
one  thing  stands  in  the  way  of  its  logic ;  the  con- 
science of  vivisectors  generally  is  not  yet  demonized 
to  that  degree.  They  dare  not  yet  say  that  they 
have  a  right  to  these  supreme  facts.  They  are  how- 
ever on  the  way  to  declare  it,  so  long  as  they  assume 
and  act  upon  a  right  to  any  fact  or  knowledge  gained 
by  the  violation  of  living  creatures. 


11. 


THE    IIIGHTS    OF   SCIENCE. 

The  rights  of  science  are  the  rights  of  man;  he 
has  a  right  to  do  right  in  his  calling.  So  science 
has  a  right  to  do  well  and  wisely,  and  honestly,  and 
a  right  not  to  do  wickedly.  There  is  a  confusion 
on  this  subject,  arising  principally  from  the  hearts 
of  the  men  now  in  question — the  vivisectors.  By 
many  of  these  scientists  science  is  conceived  as  an 
almighty  being  irrespective  of  good  and  evil ;  as 
justified  in  doing  what  it  pleases  simply  because  it 
is  science.  The  old  idea  of  divine  right,  popu- 
larly given  up  elsewhere,  has  fallen  into  it,  and 
aims  at  a  new  jurisdiction  of  the  world,  setting 
its  position  thus  :  ^'  I,  by  my  selfhood,  science,  do 
decree,"  &c.      On  the  other  hand,  it  is  here  pleaded, 


I 


I ' 


I 


6  TJI^  RIGHTS  OF  SCIENCE. 

that  if  science  goes  beyond  the  plain  lines  of  good, 
and  outrages  religion  and  humanity,  science  may  be 
as  common  a  rogue,  felon,  murderer,  or  poisoner, 
as  common  a  ruffian,  as  ever  fed  the  gibbet.  Nay 
more,  it  may  be  ruffianism  unbounded.  For 
science,  to  us  men,  is  no  abstract,  ubiquitous  thing, 
but  the  conspiring  hearts  and  minds  and  acts  and 
memories  of  the  men  who  cultivate  it.  Like  any 
other  league,  science  may  be  lawful  or  unlawful,  and 
be  left  free  or  laid  liold  of  accordingly.  It  has  no 
rights,  but  the  right  to  be  good  and  honest  in  its 
own  fair  field.  If  any  revealment  of  the  inner 
and  more  hidden  side  of  God's  works  is  to  come 
to  it,  that  right  well  obeyed  is  how  it  will  come. 

The  Place  of  Science, — Science  has  a  rank  as 
everything  else  has,  from  worm  to  philosopher,  but 
no  special  dignity  as  science.  When  good,  it  is 
large,  enlarging,  and  useful,  but  as  a  faculty  it  is 
neither  good  nor  bad  in  itself  Per  se,  its  aim 
is  to  know  from  principles.  This  abstract  knowing, 
unless  entered  by  other  powers,  is  an  exercise  of  subor- 
dinate faculties,  and  the  honest  domain  of  external 
nature  is  its  present  field.  In  other  ages  now  not 
comprehended,  but  coming  up  again  before  the 
mind,  deeper  realms  of  science  have  been  culti- 
vated ;  the  physical  and  sensual  skin  of  things  is 
the  object,  the  providential  object,  of  the  science  of 
the  present  day.  In  this  democracy  and  platitude 
of  knowledges,  what  Swedenborg  calls  scientifics, 
there  is  nothing  that  outlies  right  and  conscience, 
nothing  that  can  set  up  for  itself,  and  do  what  it 
likes  irrespective  of  good  and  evil.  The  scientific 
man's  dog,  and  the  costermonger's  donkey,  will  be 
protected  by  an  equal  England,  and  an  equal 
heaven,  and  science  must  not  harm  them.  God, 
not  science,  makes  rights. 


THE  RIGHTS  OF  SCIENCE,  7 

Wrong  Ambitions  of  Science. — It  has  happened 
from  the  foolishness  of  the  dignity  of  science,  and 
the  falsity  of  the  rights  of  science,  that  the   am- 
bitions of  science  are  preposterous.     This  is  a  root 
of  evil.     Numerous  minds  have  been  inflated  by  the 
dignity  aforesaid,  and  inflamed  by  the  rights,  which 
are  not  meant  in  nature  to  sound  the  deep  problems 
they  have  attempted.      They  lack  genius  for  the 
investigation.     They  have  no  spiritual  perceptions  ; 
no  analogical  power ;  no  ear  for  the  harmony  which 
principles  play  as  they  move  over  the  varied  and  very 
difficult  chords  of  nature.    They  are  like  astronomers 
without  telescopes,  and  indeed  without   eyes,    and 
above  all,  without  adequate  minds,  who  require  to 
have  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  in  their  observatories 
before  they  can  study  them.     They  must  vivisect 
the  system  of  nature  in  order  to  get  at  it.     So  it 
has  come,  owing    to   vanity,   dignity,   rights,    and 
shocking   privileges   unbanned  by  law,  that  many 
who  can  handle  a  scalpel,  or  a  red-hot  iron,  are  after 
the  most  insoluble  problems  with  no  inward  fitness 
for  their  comprehension  ;  or  rather,  torture  in  hand, 
they  do  not  know  or  care  what  else  they  are  after. 
Their  delirium  over  their  own  works  is  one  root  of 
vivisection.      ''Fools   rush    in   where   angels   dare 
not  tread."     This  subject  will  occur  again  presently. 
In  the  meantime  it  may  be  noted  that  the  useless, 
because  incompetent  people  referred  to,  being  with- 
out a  calling  in  knowledge,  yet  desirous  to  possess 
its  wealth  for  the  sake  of  its  honours,  constitute  the 
dangerous  classes  in  science,  and  the  criminal  class 
in  physiological  scientism ;  and  if  they  have  free 
play,  and  get  loose,  they  will  ruin  their  respective 
institutions  and  associations.     This  by  the  way. 


It 
II 


a 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  IMPOTENCE, 


\\\ 


III. 


VIVISECTION    DEMOKSTRATES    PHYSIOLOGICAL   IMPOTENCE. 

The  scalpel  and  the  pincers  are  the  evil  inverse  of 
the  physiological  mind.  Like  fatal  disease,  they  abuse 
and  slowly  kill  the  living.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
bright  mind,  armed  with  its  genius,  makes  the  dead 
anatomical  forms  alive  ;  its  faculties  recombine  them, 
inspire  them,  and  play  in  them.  To  the  violator, 
the  animal  body  is  a  house  of  unnatural  agonies,  his 
own  creation  ;  to  the  physiologist  with  a  genius,  it 
is  a  self-delighting  and  rhythmic  life.  If  you  are  by 
nature  incompetent  to  divine  this  life  from  your  own 
body  and  mind,  and  from  the  dead  subject  in  your  dis- 
secting-room, give  the  matter  up  ;  put  your  misplaced 
ambition  on  the  shelf,  and  seek  some  occupation  to 
which  you  are  adequate ;  break  stones  on  the 
geological  highroad,  or  do  anything  else  ;  but  be 
sure  that  you  can  never  maltreat  yourself  into  the 
genius  required,  by  breaking  the  vase  of  life,  and 
recording  the  spilt  phenomena.  If  you  have  any 
genius,  you  will  kill  it  so  ;  for  the  constant  love  and 
delight  of  genius  lie  in  handling  without  corporeal 
touching,  and  in  seeing  with  the  eyes  of  the  mind. 
Astronomy  is  again  in  point.  An  ambition  to 
elicit  astronomy,  with  no  genius  for  doing  so,  if 
foolishly  persevered  in,  must  force  the  mind  to  cry 
out  for  the  moon  and  stars  to  manipulate  ;  whereas 
genius  manipulates  them  where  they  are,  in  their 
order ;  the  spectrum  analysis  handles  them ;  the 
mathematical  mind  handles  them,  the  optical  mind 
too ;  the  telescope  touches  them  ;  and  their  distance 
and  its  exactitude  is  the  condition  of  true  mental  work 


THE  PATH  OF  ANALOGY,  9 

about  them.  It  would  crush  genius  and  science, 
not  to  say  the  savant  himself,  if  they  came  too 
close.  They  are  not  far  off  from  the  God-given 
intelligence  of  man ;  they  are  mercifully  far  away 
from  bis  sensuality.  Just  so  the  problems  of  life 
may  be  unfolded  from  the  contemplation  of  organic 
forms ;  if  you  complain  that  these  are  dead,  it  is 
because  you  are  a  corpse  with  regard  to  them. 
You  ought  to  seek  some  other  department  in  which 
haply  you  are  alive. 


IV. 


THE    PATH    OF    ANALOGY. 

There  is  only  the  most  trifling  analogy  between 
animals  and  men,  reasoning  from  below  upwards. 
For  animals  are  limited  sensitive  existences,  and  if 
you  will,  minds,  whose  small  works  and  ways  on 
earth  demonstrate  their  boundaries.  They  have 
bodies  and  faculties,  and  so  have  men.  But  all  that 
is  distinctively  human  outlies  the  animal,  and  in  man 
overlaps  it,  or  should  overlap  it,  so  that  it  is  lost  to 
view.  Thus  it  is  that  comparative  anatomy  and 
physiology,  looked  at  from  the  bottom  upwards,  are 
organism  without  an  interpretation,  and  gorilla- 
logical  science  is  the  blotting  out  and  the  shame 
of  human  life. 

On  the  other  hand  there  is  complete  and  illumina- 
ting analogy  between  men  and  animals  when  the  mind 
moves  rationally  from  above  downwards.  They  are 
images  and  likenesses  of  human  nature  and  society 
projected  on  living  tables.  That  means  practically 
that  you  can  learn  about  animals,  and  unlock  their 
secrets,  from  human  life,  if  you  have  the  genius  to 


lO 


THE  PATH  OF  ANALOGY. 


THE  PATH  OF  ANALOGY. 


II 


do  it ;  but  you  cannot  learn  anything  of  the  life  of 
man  from  animals.  By  the  insurgent  upward  way 
you  can  deny  the  distinctive  life  of  man,  but  that 
is  all ;  gorillalogical  induction  does  deny  it.  These 
statements  will  be  amplified  further  on. 

There  is  no  real  similarity  between  human  and 
animal  oiya7is.  The  lungs  of  a  beaver  are  as  unlike 
the  lungs  of  a  man,  as  the  mud  and  tree  construction 
which  a  beaver  makes  is  unlike  Buckingham  Palace 
or  the  Great  Western  Eailway.  They  are  as  unlike 
as  the  voices  of  all  beavers  since  the  beginning  are 
unlike  the  gathered  word  of  mankind  whose  body 
is  literature.  True,  the  two  lungs,  in  bits,  look  the 
same  ;  nay,  the  two  "  plucks  "  look  the  same.  But 
it  is  not  what  they  look  like  in  pieces,  out  of  the 
body,  but  w^hat  they  are  in  their  places  in  the 
two  bodies  ;  it  is  what  there  comes  into  them,  and 
throuofh  them,  that  makes  them  different.  Into 
the  beavers  lungs,  besides  its  physical  blood  and 
juice  for  construction  and  repair,  come  nervous 
life  and  governance  making  function  ;  and  into 
this  come  the  beaver s  affection  and  the  beavers 
instinctive  instructed  mind,  inspiring  the  animal 
lungs,  and  then  its  whole  frame,  with  its  pecu- 
liar life  :  breathing  all  that  that  life  is  into  perpe- 
tual expression  fit  for  perpetual  varied  action.  The 
beaver's  lungs  are  hung  for  that  life  with  divine 
delicacy  of  adaptation.  Into  the  man  s  lungs  comes 
his  life ;  a  portion  of  the  life  that  is  mankind  in  all 
its  development ;  in  all  human  deeds  and  achieve- 
ments. There  is  no  ratio  between  the  inspiration  in  an 
animal's  lungs  and  this  stupendous  descending  influx 
into  human  lungs  poised  by  the  All- Wise  to  receive 
it.  The  invisible  but  most  real  forces  pressing 
into  the  man,  are  in  a  measure  infinite  in  power  and 
purpose  compared  to  the  forces,  also  invisible,  press- 


ing down  into  the  beaver.  The  influx  of  the  human 
pressure  upon  the  organ,  constant  from  end  to  end 
of  life,  makes  the  very  form  all  it  is  at  last. 

How  do  living  forces  act  ?  or,  What  is  Life  f — Life 
in  the  body  is  the  fitness  of  the  body  to  be  laid  hold 
of  by  the  soul  and  the  mind,  following  the  influx  which 
first  forms  and  then  uses  the  fitness.     It  is  the  cor- 
respondence of  the  body  to  the  wants  and  uses  of 
the  man  within  it  and  above  it.     The  form  of  each 
organism  is  what  constitutes  that  fitness,  and  is  that 
correspondency.    Thus  the  organism  seen  in  its  place 
by  the  anatomically  instructed  eye  of  a  fitting  genius, 
is  an  incarnate  exhibition  of  the  mental  and  spiritual 
working  of  the  inhabitant  of  the  organism.     The 
nerves  that  carry  human  thought  and  feeling  through 
the    body   proceed    from    embodied   faculties   non- 
existent in  the  animal,  and  require  adaptations  in 
form  and  in  function,  in  blood  and  fluid,  for  which 
the  animal  has  no  use.    The  poise  of  Newton's  lungs 
for  a  problem,  the  hush  to  hear  the  supreme  word  of 
it ;— the  held  breath  of  a  Swedenborg,  as  truth  after 
truth,  revelation  after  revelation,  astonishment  after 
astonishment,  translated   themselves  into  spiritual, 
solid  fact  on  the  prepared  tables  of  his  understand- 
ing,— into  full-armed  fact  on  its  massive  balks  and 
strands ; — no  animal  is  competent  to  these  positions, 
and  none  therefore  requires  them.    Physical  they  still 
are,  yet  not  animal,  but  spiritual  and  intellectual  phy- 
sics.    The  telegraphs  proceed  from  different  forces, 
and  require  at  the  other  end,  in  the  organs,  attitudes 
for  signifying  their  commands,  alphabets  to  be  trans- 
lated  into   bodily  messages,  and   powers   that   are 
beyond  the  scope  of  animal  life. 

This  is  difficult  to  see,  yet  it  is  true.    The  way  not 
to  see  it  is,  to  prosecute  human  anatomy  with  no 


13 


THE  PATH  OF  ANALOGY. 


spiritual  genius  to  animate  its  dead  side.  And  one 
way  to  deny  and  abhor  these  truths  is  to  cut  up  ani- 
mals alive,  and  to  reason  and  infer  from  their  irrele- 
vant life  ;  the  violation  of  which  is  the  only  thing  you 
know  about  it,  for  now  it  is  your  own  selfhood  in  its 
artifices.  Here  knowledge  is  not  the  double  of 
existence ;  the  truths  of  violation,  except  as  heavy 
judgments  on  man,  are  not  the  truths  of  the  Creator. 
They  are  the  lies  of  the  devil. 

There  is  no  real  similarity  between  the  organs  and 
parts  of  animals  opened  and  dissected  alive,  and  the 
corresponding  organs  and  parts  in  animals  in  the 
enjoyment  of  their  existence. — Animal  life  and  the 
functions  of  that  life  in  organism,  are  here  the  quest 
of  the  physiologist.  Again,  from  another  point  of 
view,  what  is  life  ?  Life  is  the  operant  affection  or 
love  which  every  animal  has  for  following  out  its  pecu- 
liar nature  through  its  organization.  The  creature 
has  a  practical  mind  answering  to  this  love  or  supreme 
want,  which  is  its  being.  It  has  a  body,  which  its 
nature  and  its  mind  fill  from  inmost  to  outmost,  and 
which  carries  them  both  into  its  actions.  Every  fibre 
and  function  of  fibre  is  instinct  with  these  lives,  one 
within  the  other.  The  product  of  this  animal  love 
of  itself,  and  of  what  it  is  and  does,  is  an  offensive 
and  defensive  unity  of  the  creature.  For  this  end 
all  the  parts  are  related  to  each  other,  and  cannot 
livingly  be  contemplated  apart.  There  is  sympathy, 
co-operation,  affection  of  part  for  part,  and  affection 
of  the  whole  creature  to  itself,  for  maintenance,  pro- 
pagation, and  power.  Dissect  the  animal  when  dead, 
and  in  exact  proportion  to  your  own  understanding 
of  love,  and  the  current  of  faculty  which  flows  from 
that,  to  your  physiological  genius,  to  your  affectionate 
sympathy  with  the  animal  life  and  habit  under  view, 


THE  PATH  OF  ANALOGY. 


13 


and  to  your  divination  of  character  as  a  soul  of  form, — 
in  proportion  to  your  human  respect  of  the  creature 
when  alive, — you  will  reanimate  the  prostrate  organi- 
zation, and  gradually  help  your  science  to  divine  how 
the  structures  before  you  correspond  to  the  parts  of 
the  nature  which  is  carried  out  in  the  existence  of  the 
animal.  You  will  see  how  its  organism  hands  down 
its  character  into  the  world  of  sense  in  the  actions  of 
its  life.  That  organic  set  of  perceptions  is  the  phy- 
siology of  any  one  animal.  You  will  see,  for  example, 
how  a  horse's  lungs  hang  upon  its  thoughts  and 
desires  ;  how  a  tiger  s  lungs  hang  upon  its  love  ;  and 
so  forth.  You  will  see  that  the  integrality  of  every 
position  in  the  animal  is  a  necessity  for  your  percep- 
tions. You  will  see  the  existing  case  by  a  horse 
genius,  and  a  tiger  genius,  given  through  correspon- 
dences into  your  own  faculties. 

Cut  the  animal  up  alive,  and  the  tightness  of  life 
is  gone  ;  the  draw  of  respiration  is  gone  ;  inspiration, 
which  fills  all  creatures,  and  expiration,  which  puri- 
fies for  another  filling— these  are  cancelled.  Equable 
tension,  which  is  life's  ever- varying  plane,  is  gone,  and 
life  has  no  playground  left.  Separate  spasms  repre- 
sent violation  by  the  man,  and  aberration  of  the 
victim.  Distinctive  function  disappears,  for  function 
comes  of  wholeness.  Like  the  lobster  casting  away 
its  claws,  the  animal  would  break  itself  to  pieces  if 
it  could.  It  does  break  up  its  autonomy  of  function. 
Its  intimate  contortions  evidence  this.  Its  life  and 
offices  now  are  horrible  fragments,  so  crushed  that 
no  understanding  can  repiece  them.  The  bloody  con- 
sciousness of  the  false  physiologist  never  even  tries 
to  do  so.  He  shows  the  tatters  and  rags  of  a  nature, 
ignorant  that  before  he  began  they  lay  as  delights  in 
the  harmonious  clothing  of  an  organized  animal  soul. 


r-i 


14  BASE  PHYSIOLOGY, 


V. 


BASE  PHYSIOLOGY 


15 


NONE  BUT  THE  BASEST  ANALYTICAL  FACTS  HAVE  A 
PLACE  IN  THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  THE  DAY. 

They  are  not  low  facts,  for  sucli  are  indispensable  as 
a  basis  in  every  science  ;  but  they  are  essentially 
base  and  inhuman  facts,  the  impostures  of  their 
subjects.  Put  forth  with  great  pride,  they  are 
disgraceful  to  knowledge.  The  physiologists  glory 
in  their  shame.  Such  physiology,  and  it  now  repre- 
sents nearly  the  whole  science,  errs  in  several  ways. 
It  takes  for  granted  the  actual  identity  of  animal 
and  human  nerves,  muscles,  and  viscera,  and  uncon- 
sciously substitutes  the  animal  for  the  human.  Per- 
force it  leaves  out  all  which  is  not  identical,  and 
therefore  omits  the  human.  It  is  animality  sen- 
sualized by  physiology.  It  is  made  up  of  bits  of 
animal  agonies ;  a  carved  obscene  idol  of  the 
laboratory.  Under  it  lies  an  automaton  got  from  tor- 
tured insects.  The  pangs  of  dogs  and  cats,  and  rabbits, 
and  all  animals  cheap  enough  to  be  its  food,  or  to  take 
its  poison  and  receive  its  pollution,  are  its  entrails  ; 
a  woof  and  web  like  that  of  the  fatal  sisters,  of 
which  such  physiology  is  one.  Its  brains  are  muti- 
lations. A  poorer  monster,  or  a  more  gory,  never 
was  laid  out  in  the  deadhouse  of  scientific  inquest. 
It  is  impossible  to  identify  remains  which  are  the 
mincemeat  of  zoology.  They  belong  every  day  to 
more  and  more  victims.  There  are  skinned  rats  in 
it,  and  all  maltreated  vermin  in  it ;  and  every  one  of 
them  is  sweet  and  innocent  compared  to  the  cruelty 
that  sits  at  the  trough  where  these  poor  creatures  are 
muzzled  and  martyred. 


After  such  an  analysis,  synthesis  is  plainly  impos- 
sible, excepting  such  synthesis  as  a  now  historical 
surgeon  made,  who  taliacotianized  a  living  rat  to  a 
living  crow.  Conglutination  is  evidently  possible, 
and  that  is  what  physiology  has  attained  to.  It  is  a 
menagerie  of  direful  creatures  and  symptoms  packed 
until  they  grow  together,  and  then  accepted  as  the 
adequate  analogue  of  the  human  body,  and  as  the 
minister  and  interpreter  of  human  life. 

All  reasoning  from  these  sanguinary  pieces,  from 
this  physiological  "  Thames  Mystery,"  is  of  course 
analogical ;  but  analogy  will  not  work  here.  Its 
bridges  do  not  reach  from  animals  to  man,  still  less 
from  violated  animals  to  the  truths  of  science. 
Subverted  animal  organs,  functions,  and  professors, 
are  all  that  is  present.  Incapacity,  greedily  calling 
for  more  victims  to  make  it  capable,  is  witness  to  the 
futility  of  violational  research.  In  short,  vivisection 
is  the  lean  famine  and  gory  jaws  of  a  false  and  evil 
science. 

Human  physiology  is  not  extant ;  at  present  there 
is  no  such  thing  ;  but  the  substantial  facts  of  that 
anatomico-physiological  geography  which  is  common 
to  all  organized  beings,  and  therefore  in  no  sense 
proper  to  man,  may  be  better  elicited  by  anatomy 
and  other  sources  of  human  observation  than  by 
any  cruel  methods.  Had  vivisection  been  impos- 
sible, the  circulation  of  the  blood  mio^ht  have  been 
elicited  by  Harvey,  by  injection  and  common  obser- 
vation. All  the  ^'  vaso  motor "  thoughts  can,  and 
have,  come  into  the  gifted  mind,  without  dissecting 
and  irritating  the  arteries  or  capillaries  of  living 
animals.  The  formulas  about  reflex  action,  the 
telegraphy  of  nerves,  can  be  suggested  by  the 
simplest  means  when   the   mind   wants   them.     A 


i6 


BASE  PHYSIOLOGY. 


pinch  of  snuff  followed  by  a  sneeze  presents  the  full 
doctrine  to  a  physiological  Newton,  as  a  falling  apple 
presented  gravitation.  The  decease  of  sanguinary 
sensuality  would  of  itself  remove  a  film  of  sin  from 
the  eye  of  physiology  ;  and  genius,  with  humane 
and  penetrating  thoughts,  honouring  the  lives  of 
all  creatures,  could  then  come  behind  the  field  of 
vision.  The  function  of  imagination  in  science, 
spoken  of  lately  by  one  experimentalist,  would  have 
room  criven  to  it,  when  sensual  violence,  which 
stands  as  a  red  spectre  between  man  and  discovery, 
was  pushed  aside  as  a  diabolical  means.  Repentance 
of  the  evils  treated  of,  in  setting  aside  hard  hearts, 
would  leave  new  men  impressible  to  new  revelations 
of  knowledge. 

There  will  be  mistakes  then,  guesses  that  are 
wrono- :  are  there  none  now  ?  Vivisector  contradicts 
vivisector  ;  and  the  record  of  one  set  of  experiments 
challenores  and  obliterates  the  record  of  another.  The 
scientists  are  in  a  hurry  to  be  scientific,  but  God 
opens  no  gates  to  hurry.  If  the  genius  is  not  there, 
put  up  with  the  absence  of  it,  and  attend  to  the 
works  of  the  day.  You  will  never  take  the  kingdom 
of  physiology  by  violence  directed  to  other  sentient 
creatures,  though  you  may  take  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  by  force — force  put  upon  yourself  to  repress 
the  lusts  of  cruelty  in  your  own  heart.  And  that 
repression,  violent  if  need  be,  is  the  main  factor  which 
it  lies  with  ourselves  to  employ,  to  call  down  genius 
and  its  marvellous  sight  from  the  place  where  it 
abides. 

This  matter  of  absence  of  hurry  is  of  great  import 
in  these  sciences.  It  is  not  as  if  there  were  a  petty 
plan  to  be  known,  and  it  could  be  got  to  the  bottom 
of  speedily  by  human  probes,  but  the  field  is  such 


EGYPT. 


17 


that  only  a  little  of  it  can  ever  be  acquired  by  man- 
kind— probably  only  the  parts  that  are  needful, 
because  edifying  for  each  particular  age;  all  the  rest 
being  vanity  strutting  in  nature.  New  conscience 
first,  and  then,  new  mind,  coming  to  the  investiga- 
tion, in  a  manner  born  for  it,  will  elicit  fresh  dis- 
coveries as  they  are  required.  These  will  be  partial 
views  also,  but  useful.  In  a  few  years,  judging  from 
the  nature  of  such  facts,  and  from  the  history  of 
science,  and  the  wants  of  the  minds  of  successive 
generations,  they  will  be  put  aside  for  other  formulas 
germane  to  each  new  time.  No  greed  of  getting  the 
final  thing,  of  cashing  nature  into  scientific  gold, 
and  enriching  the  little  selfhood  of  a  day  with  its 
wealth,  can  have  any  result  but  that  of  putting  the 
asses'  ears  of  Midas  upon  poor  science.  It  is  cruel 
and  deluding  to  hold  out  prospects  of  such  wealth  to 
a  host  of  small  speculators  in  the  truth  mines  of 
nature.  The  most  of  them,  by  debasing  and  soiling 
their  age,  spoil  the  greater  enterprise  of  genius,  and 
practise  deliberate  if  not  cruel  idleness  themselves. 
Protestant  countries  are  overrun  with  monkish 
orders  of  science,  and  many  a  strong  arm  born  for 
service  is  thus  abstracted  from  the  beneficent 
work  of  the  world,  which  wants  all  hands  at  present 
to  do  it. 


VI. 


EGYPT. 


The  present  range  of  violational  facts  fits  into  no 
system  of  truth,  and  cannot  he  appropriated  by  the 
vivisector s:  it  will  he  taken  from  them,  and  put  to  use 
by  those  who  renounce  their  ways  as  heing  evil. — Any 


B 


i8 


EG  YPT. 


processes,  however  monstrous,  if  persevered  in,  will 
elicit  a  system   of  facts   under  a  system-maker— a 
complex  and  enormous  system,  simulating  a  creation, 
if  time  and  room  for  growth  be  given.     All  evil  is 
such  a  system,  and  is  indeed  a  vast  nature ;  but  it 
founds  a  stupidity  which  makes  lasting  possession  of 
facts  impossible.    So  of  vivisection.     It  leaves  stand- 
ing a  ghastly,  and  if  you  please  universal  science, 
answering  properly  to  nothing  within  or  without — 
a   science  of  human   selfhood,  with  large  delusive 
dreams  of  possession.     This  exists,  and  cannot  yet 
be  forgotten;  it  must  be  administered;  and  it  will 
be  handed  over  to  humane   genius   seeking   other 
ends.     To  that  genius  it  can  be  useful,  because  it  is 
now  property  where  property  can  be  held ;  and  in 
its  hands  it  may  confirm  some  results.     It  is,  indeed, 
a  bog  of  fallacies,  but  bogs  must  be  burnt,  or  planted, 
and  then  cultivated.    Now,  nothing  is  admitted  here, 
excepting  that  ill-gotten  gains  of  former  times  will 
pass  to  good  men,  and  without  farther  crime  be  em- 
ployed for  honest  ends.      We  shall  have  no  more 
pounding  of  animal  life  ;  there  is  bad  blood  enough 
in  that  way  already,  and  science  will  feel  the  angry 
effects  of  it  for  long  ;  but  we  have  the  stuff  on  hand, 
and  it  is  ours,  chiefly  for  avoiding  ;  and  in  grains,  for 
insight,  and  for  humanity.     It  will  not  defile  the 
fingers  of  those  who  abhor  the  method  of  its  acqui- 
sition, but  cannot  give  it  back  to  the  dead.     It  is  the 
old    story;    the   gold    and    silver    vessels    of    the 
Egyptians  may  be  borrowed  by  the  Israehtes,  and 
will  belong  to  them  on  their  march.      The  Holy 
Scripture  has  many. instances  of  the  transference  of 
the  possessions  of  evil  to  the  hands  of  good ;  and  here 
also  we  shall  have  to  be  faithful  in  the  unrighteous 
mammon. 


EGYPT. 


19 


There  are  similarities  between  this  black  art  of  the 
violationists  and  the  ancient  mysteries  of  Egypt. — 
Both  of  them  mingle  beasts  and  men  in  a  common 
rite  and  a  common  creed.     Both  of  them  accept  the 
theory  of  transformations,  and  reckon  all  life  to  be 
continuous   and   identical,  and    the    passage    from 
monkeys  to  men  of  actual  occurrence.    Both  of  them 
regard  beasts  as  sacred,  i.e.,  consecrated  to  destruc- 
tive rites.      With  both  of  them  life  is  limited  to 
nature,  and  its  gods  or  theories  are  artificial  pro- 
ducts.     With   both,    secrecy   is    the    final    result; 
secrecy  of  plans  and  perpetrations  ;  and  then  secrecy 
of  writing  forth  ;  hieroglyphics,  and  uncommon  ter- 
minology.    The  good  of  neither  can  be  told  ;  there 
is  no  common  population,  no  Eoyal  Commission  even, 
that  can  learn  it;  for  it  is  a  mystery,  and  belongs  to 
priests  and  to  professionals.     Both  are  systems  of 
subjugation  of  the  human  mind.    Both  leave  out  the 
common  people,  except  as  tools,  and  slaves  to  rites 
and  operations.     Both   believe   in   the  eternity   of 
men*s  bodies — an  eternity  of  mummy,  and  the  con- 
sequences of  mummy ;  and  an  eternity  of  the  scien- 
tific body  of  a  man's  fame — his  mental  mummy. 
Both  of  them  are  jealous  with  that  cruel  jealousy 
that  belongs  to  privileges  which  are  sacred,  secret, 
and  evil.     Both  are  anti-human,  final  states  of  per- 
version which  have  come  down  from  a  long   and 
degenerating  past ;  whereof  the  one  has  long  since 
had  its  doom,  and  is  only  known  in  Scripture  and  in 
monument;    and  the  other  is  now  summoned  and 
invaded  by  the  angel  of  humanity  that  will  destroy 
it.     The  existence  of  both  marks  the  decline  of  a 
great  religion,  and  exhibits  a  statue  of  its  consumma- 
tion and  its  woe.     Both  of  them  summon  the  deso- 
lating plagues  of  the  last  times.     Human  agency. 


20 


EGYPT. 


under  divine,  is  in  both  cases  the  means  by  which 
the  evil  Egypt  will  be  brought  to  a  close.  Both  die 
of  a  new  religion. 

The  evil  heart  toward  vivisection  has  heen  growing 
for   ages,   hut   tvith   rapidity   in  the   latter  half  of 
this  century. — In  former  times  it  was  confined  to 
renowned  professors,  now  it  extends  to  the  students 
of  medical  colleges,  and  the  practice  is  only  limited 
by  their  consciences,  which  are  in  good  part  formed 
by   the   bad   examples   of  their  teachers.      Careful 
books  are  published  for  the  classes  to  instruct  them 
how  to  do  the  violations.     When  the  present  writer 
was  in  medical  school,  to  the  best  of  his  knowledge 
no  student  ever  dreamed  of  doing  such  things  ;  an 
animal  was  occasionally  poisoned  with  woorali  by  a 
lecturer,    but  this  led  to   no  repetition  of   experi- 
ment ;  and  if  students  had  been  known  to  violate 
doo-s  and  cats,  the  general  conscience  of  the  school 
would    have    rebuked    it.      All   this   has    quickly 
changed  for  the  worse.     Now,  however,  when  these 
practices  are  coming  up  for  judgment,  we  learn  that 
only  a  few  frogs,   and  such  like  insignificant   and 
smally  sentient  creatures,  are  the  victims  of  the  pro- 
cess.    Unfortunately,  the  hand-books  do  not  say  so  ; 
and  the  apologists  never  said  so  till  now.    We  know, 
on  the  contrary,  that  dogs  and  cats,  rabbits,  guinea 
pigs,   rats,   innumerable,    have    been    violated     to 
scientific  slow  death  of  late  years  ;    we  know  that 
if  elephants  were  cheap,  and  if  secrecy  was  cheap, 
elephants  would  have  figured  to  as  large  an  extent 
as  rats  in  the  troughs  of  vivisection,  and  to  audiences 
tending  to   grow   from   rat-dimension  to  elephant- 
dimension.     No  man  not  interested  personally,  but 
humanely,  can  doubt  what  the  vivisectors  are  doing, 
or  what  they  would  have  done.     In  one  laboratory. 


EGYPT. 


21 


teste  Dr.  Hoggan,  from  one  to  three  dogs  a  day  was 
the  number  of  victims.  As  vivisection  is  now  at 
the  bar,  its  plea  of  "  only  frogs  "  is  pleaded  against 
out  of  its  own  records. 

But  then  chloroform  and  anaesthetics  have  made  it 
all  right ;  the  animals  sacred  to  writhing  for  hours 
on  the  altars  of  science,  and  to  supplying  the  food 
of  new  systems  to  the  self-created  intellect  of  man, — 
they,  by  mercy  of  science,  feel  no  pain,  but  are  read 
through  like  books,  and  then  put  underground. 
Are  the  vivisectors,  who  are  now  at  the  bar  of  God 
and  man,  and  w^ho  have  a  heavy  verdict  to  fear, 
impartial  witnesses  ?  They  have  borne  the  suflferings 
of  the  flesh  of  other  beings  so  calmly,  that  they  are 
poor  judges  of  what  hurts.  It  is  known  that  in 
many  cases  chloroform  does  not  annul  the  force 
of  dreadful  nervous  shock.  It  is  known  that  after- 
consciousness  often  reports  agony  suflfered  during  sur- 
gical operations  under  ''  ansesthesia."  One  sees  that 
the  preliminary  process  of  muzzling,  and  tying,  and 
holding  for  the  despotism  of  the  coming  knife,  is 
outrageously  cruel ;  that  the  smell  of  the  last  vic- 
tim's violation,  to  creatures  of  instinct,  is  horrible 
beyond  our  nerves  ;  and  that  no  one  who  loved  a 
dog  or  a  cat  could  go  on  with  the  process,  and  that 
nobody  but  a  Royal  Commission  could  doubt  the 
fact.  True,  somewhat  similar  things  are  done  for 
surgical  operations  ;  but  there  is  voluntary  submis- 
sion there,  and  purpose  of  use  and  service,  which 
may  fill  the  knife  with  a  sacred  tenderness  where 
the  vivisecting  scalpel  is  all  human  cruelty  harder 
than  the  steel.  No  one  not  partially  demonized  can 
do  the  one  thing  to  a  dog  ;  the  tenderest  of  men 
might,  under  necessity,  do  the  other  to  his  own 
daughter  or  his  own  wife.     A  man  has  a  right  to  be 


22 


EGYPT, 


abstracted  from  the  pangs  he  causes,  let  them  be 
ever  so  mortal,  if  he  feels  and  knows  that  he  is 
doing  pure  good  in  pure  justice  to  his  fellows,  or  to 
the  animal  tribes  :  he  has  full  right  to  be  surgeon, 
butcher,  executioner ;  to  administer  the  cat ;  to 
direct  the  battle,  point  the  cannon,  and  wield  the 
cutlass ;  honourable  and  honest  right ;  but  to  build 
up  his  own  selfhood  in  science  out  of  the  woes  and 
pains  of  other  beings,  is  simply  devilish,  and  abhor- 
rent to  all  human  conscience,  as  to  all  human  culture. 
The  utter  selfishness  of  the  end,  the  ''do  as  you 
like"  of  it,  first  the  private  selfishness,  then  the 
corporate  selfishness,  a  worse  form  than  the  private, 
consigns  these  deeds,  one  and  all,  to  the  deepest 
abysses  of  crime — not  the  less  criminal  that  tiiey 
are  not  yet  legal  crime. 

If  it  were  possible  to  take  the  word  of  the  defen- 
dants, which  no  judge  on  any  bench  would  dare  to 
do,  and  if  chloroform  really  fell  on  the  victims  as  a 
sweet  sleep  from  which  they  were  never  to  awaken, 
as  in  a  bed  where  the  operator  was  like  a  cradle- 
rocking  nurse  ;  and  if  the  strokes  which  open  brain 
and  spine,  and  chest  and  abdomen,  were  unfelt,  still 
the  question  would  come.  What  right  have  you  to 
do  this  horrid  thing  to  one  of  God's  sentient  crea- 
tures ?  We  deny  the  rights  of  your  artificial  science : 
you  gain  no  truth  or  good  ;  nothing  but  evil  curiosity 
and  ambition  gi'atified  by  your  doings.  We  also 
assert  that  you  are  acting  against  the  best  interests 
of  real  science  when  you  are  spoiling  your  own 
faculties,  which  are  the  science  perceivers.  Pain,  or 
no  pain,  the  sights  and  sounds  and  contortions,  the 
violation  of  organic  insides,  are  simply  abominable  ; 
and  nothing  but  a  dreadful  education  could  enable 
you  to  witness  them.     Chloroform  has  given  you  a 


EGYPT, 


n 


seeming  right  to  quarry  all  animal  life  as  if  it  was 
marble  of  your  estate,  meant  to  be  cut  up  into  your 
statues,  and  to  hand  down  your  well-inscribed  monu- 
ments to  after  ages ;  to  build  Egyptian  pyramids  for 
perishable  you.  Chloroform  has  blunted  your  feelings 
to  the  destruction  inwrought  upon  yourselves.  It  has 
extended  indefinitely  into  science  the  already  great 
empire  of  the  savage  man  who  murders  charity  as 
he  goes.  It  has  made  the  demon  of  materialism 
into  the  organon  and  mouthpiece  of  the  truths  of  hv- 
ing  natures.  It  is  the  conscience-quieting  opiate  of  a 
science  dying  of  its  own  abominations  :  the  '^  soul 
take  thine  ease"  of  all  ruinous  doctors  and  professors. 
Plea  that  animals  are  automatons, — Will  you  here 
plead,  as  a  subtle  doctrine  of  justification,  that 
animals  are  automatons,  and  have  no  feelings  ?  If 
you  do,  that  hypothesis  comes  from  no  impartial  con- 
sideration, but  is  the  fruit  of  past  misdeeds,  and 
contains  the  seed  of  endless  evils  to  come.  Were  it 
true,  violation  would  be  as  abhorrent  to  every  sense 
as  it  is  now.  The  torture  of  what  seems  to  live 
and  agonize  would  be  shocking  to  the  mind. 
And  again,  were  it  true,  the  hypothesis  extended 
whither  the  good  Berkeley  never  carried  his  idealism, 
would  plead  that  all  men,  women,  and  children,  but 
excepting  only  self,  are  but  phantasms  and  auto- 
mata, and  can  as  such  be  handled  without  remorse. 
Now  all  crime,  in  exact  proportion  to  its  enormity, 
does  so  deal  with  them  ;  and  the  hopelessness  of 
crime  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  has  no  sense  of  the 
sufferings  of  other  people.  Their  merely  automatic 
character  is  its  intellect,  and  universal  perceptive 
state.  And  reversing  the  process,  it  may  be 
assumed  as  certain  that  violational  scientism  can- 
not reign  long  before  the  stupefaction  of  humane 


24 


INTERESTS  OF  SCIENCE, 


mind  which  it  causes,  reveals  itself  in  a  formal  doc- 
trine before  the  world  that  animals  are  mere  automa- 
tons, and  may  be  scientifically,  conscientiously,  and 
religiously  sawn  like  boards.  We  hail  here  the 
truth  that  every  practised  evil  has  its  own  falsity 
to  confirm  it  and  make  it  comfortable  (see  Sweden- 
borg). 

VIL 


INTERESTS    OF    SCIENCE. 

The  interests  of  Science  are  pleaded. — The  rights 
of  science  have  already  been  somewhat  considered  ; 
the  interests  mean  much  the  same  thing  as  the 
rights.  But  they  mean  also  vested  interests,  such 
as  a  corporation  enjoys  by  royal  charter.  Science 
represented  by  the  medical  profession  has  long  been 
established  by  law  ;  it  is  supposed  to  know  its  own 
business,  and  that  nobody  else  knows  it ;  therefore 
it  resents  public  opinion  as  irrelevant,  and  laughs  at 
the  policeman.  He  cannot  get  into  the  torture- 
room  called  the  laboratory,  because  vested  interests 
stand  at  the  door.  The  conscience  of  the  age,  filled 
in  many  other  channels  with  the  pressure  of  a  new 
Christianity,  insists  upon  examining  all  vested 
interests  to  ascertain  if  they  be  indeed  the  real 
interests  in  the  case  ;  this  conscience,  as  in  Plimsoll, 
insists  upon  being  admitted  by  law  into  dark  corners 
hitherto  unexplored.  It  will  press  into  the  dens  of 
science,  and  clear  them  of  their  money-changers, 
even  though  these  cry  out :  '*  The  temple,  the  temple ; 
you  are  violating  the  established  temple  of  our 
truth  ! " 

So  much  for  these  vested  interests,    allowed  to 


INTERESTS  OF  SCIENCE, 


25 


grow  to  direful  proportions  in  the  deadness  of  the 
professorial  and  the  sleep  of  the  public  conscience. 

Other  interests  of  physiological  science  are  founded 
upon  pleas  of  service  and  good  character.  Such  science 
must  be  free  to  do  as  it  likes,  because  it  is  a  good 
friend  to  practical  medicine  and  human  healing. 
Medicine  has  made  great  strides  of  late,  and  this  is 
owing  noticeably  to  violation al  science.  Now,  on 
the  contrary,  the  side  of  medicine  which  is  turned 
to  such  physiology,  has  made  no  assignable  progress 
from  this  source.  It  has  been  corrupted  by  it,  nay 
torn  and  mangled  by  it,  and  instead  of  diseases  being 
healed,  tissues  and  nerves  and  muscles  have  been 
treated,  and  chemicals  without  have  been  fired  into 
presumed  chemicals  within,  often  with  violent  aim. 
Anaesthesia,  or  the  momentary  obliteration  of  the 
sense  of  painful  symptoms,  has  drugged  the  patient 
and  the  art.  The  tendency  is  to  squander  the 
doctor  in  scientific  vagaries  when  he  ought  to  be 
gathered  up  in  a  common-sense  head  before  the 
case ;  to  make  him  walk  like  a  probe,  see  like  a 
knife,  and  think  like  a  microscope.  Nevertheless, 
in  spite  of  evil  physiology  whispering  at  its  ear, 
medicine  has  made  advances.  From  plain  causes. 
The  public,  subject  to  a  new  spirit  from  God,  will 
not  abide  the  former  physic,  and  the  public  forces 
the  profession  to  do  something  else  ;  and  the  com- 
pulsory abandonment  of  much  poisonous  drugging 
is  an  advance  in  the  fate  of  the  physician.  The  pres- 
sure on  the  age  is  here  ;  the  descending  pressure, 
impossible  to  be  gainsaid,  of  a  new  Christian  Church; 
and  the  doctors  have,  like  other  callings,  the  bene- 
fit of  it.  'Tis  real  estate  to  be  still  permitted  to  be 
active  and  not  to  be  able  to  do  evil. 

Concurrently,  many  benign  things  have  come  in 


26 


INTERESTS  OF  SCIENCE, 


DEC  A  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 


27 


along  with  this  irresistible  pressure  of  the  higher 
world  upon  the  lower.  Homoeopathy  has  come  down 
one  little  rational  ray,  and  saves  the  divine  uses  of 
druo-s,  where  their  abuses  would  otherwise  have  cast 
them  out  of  healing  altogether.  It  has  lifted 
poisons  into  helps,  as  the  brazen  serpent  was  lifted 
up  to  save  those  who  were  dying  of  venomous 
serpents.  It  has  fought  its  way,  and  will  fight  so 
lonof  as  it  is  needed.  No  one  denies  that  it  has 
stricken  the  blood  bowl  and  the  poison  bowl  out  of 
the  hands  of  old  physic.  It  has  also  knocked  the 
brains  out  of  common  physiology,  which  cannot 
understand  it.  The  public  has  seen  this ;  has 
watched  the  combat;  and  a  stride  towards  small 
doses  is  made  by  medicine,  because  the  patients  feel 
their  good,  and  also  will  no  longer  take  large  doses. 
But  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  cutting  up  dogs  and 
cats  alive  ;  advance  in  physic  has  not  been  owing  to 
their  hells.  The  cause  is  clear ;  new  thought  and 
life  given  from  above,  and  new  arts  and  sciences 
worthy  of  the  name,  born  of  the  open  reception  of 
good  by  the  people  at  large,  and  then  stolen  by  the 
old  profession. 

The  discouragement,  however,  by  which  evil  phy- 
siology has  operated  against  these  benign  results,  is 
immense ;  no  man  can  calculate  it.  It  has  put 
back  the  cause  of  physical  health,  nay  more,  of  honest 
and  honourable  care  for  the  body  and  the  man,  for 
generations,  for  it  has  stupefied  the  medical  pro- 
fession and  enslaved  under  its  spiritual  dulness 
nearly  the  whole  population. 

We  now  proceed  to  read  some  of  the  signs  of  this 
state  of  things. 


VIII. 

EXTENSION  AND  DECAY  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 

Vaccination, — The  introduction  of  vaccination,  the 
persistence  in  it,  and  its  elevation  into  a  compulsory 
law,  may  be  cited  as  a  cardinal  instance  of  blindness 
to  the  most  general  considerations  of  health  on  the 
part  of  the  medical  profession.  Stupid  as  vaccination 
is  in  the  present,  it  is  more  perniciously  stupid  for 
the  future.  None  but  a  chartered  calling  in  interior 
private  ruin  could  entertain  or  maintain  it.  See 
how  the  case  stands. 

The  causes  of  death  may  be  divided  into  natural, 
accidental,  and  hereditary.  Few  people  die  natural 
deaths,  of  mere  fulness  of  years  without  intervention 
of  disease.  Many  die  of  acute  diseases  ;  and  of  these 
a  large  proportion  have  weakness  of  constitution 
lying  in  them,  which  betokens  hereditary  taint,  with- 
out which  the  accidental  disease  would  not  have 
arrested  their  lives.  The  third  class  comprises  the 
hereditary  diseases  which  fatally  affect  the  com- 
munity. Scrofula,  consumption,  insanity,  gout,  can- 
cer, syphilis,  and  the  vice  diseases,  such  as  drunken- 
ness and  the  like,  are  genera  of  disease  which  belong 
here.  They  figure  largely  in  the  causes  of  death. 
Temporary  maladies  are  influenced  by  them  towards 
fatal  issues.  Thus  many  cases  of  whooping-cough 
and  measles,  and  of  teething,  die  because  of  their 
consumptive  parentage.  For  this  reason  the  number 
of  deaths  from  hereditary  causes  might  be  multiplied 
in  the  returns. 


), 


28 


DEC  A  Y  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 


DEC  A  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 


29 


If  we  could  survey  the  infants  of  the  United  King- 
dom, and  make  inquisition  of  their  parentage,  and 
then  take  note  of  the  infant  rate  of  mortality,  and  of 
subsequent  mortalities  by  decenniums,  we  might 
nearly  allocate  the  numbers  that  would  die  out  of 
the  multitude  of  cases  thus  brought  before  us.  So 
many  of  them  of  syphilis  in  the  first  year,  with  so 
many  of  syphilis  left  alive  for  future  ill  health,  or  as 
easy  grounds  for  other  diseases.  So  many  of  cancer, 
late  perhaps  in  life  ;  the  mother  s  history  pointing 
the  way.  So  many  of  consumption  at  various  stages 
of  life.  So  many  of  madness.  So  many  of  heart 
disease.  If  we  could  see  far  enough,  we  could  pre- 
dict from  the  known  taint  the  ground  of  death.  Not 
seeing  at  all,  we  yet  know  that  the  cause  is  there 
from  the  equable  death-rate.  Some  taint  of  the 
kind  exists  in  nearly  every  family,  and  explains  its 
vices,  its  deaths,  and  often  its  extinction. 

God  has  made  families  separate,  and  the  taints 
with  which  they  are  afflicted,  and  of  which  they  die, 
are  separate  also.  The  more  separate  they  are  kept, 
as  by  well-assorted  marriages,  such  assorting  being 
honest  enlightened  separation,  the  better  it  evidently 
is  for  human  nature. 

The  blood  which  is  the  life  also  has  in  it  the  blood 
which  is  the  death.  This  death  is  a  seed  working  in 
the  system  until  its  destruction  is  prematurely 
effected.  The  great  diseases  are  the  organs  and 
manufactories  of  human  decay.  They  exist  in  their 
beo^innino^s  in  nearly  all  our  infants  :  one  mortal 
disease  in  one  class  of  constitutions,  another  in 
another  class  ;  and  more  or  less  misery  and  overt 
malady  of  body  and  mind  accompanies  the  taint  in 
its  progress  from  the  cradle  to  the  coffin. 

There  is  no  medical  dogma  so  much  insisted  upon 


as  vaccination.  Though  of  recent  family,  it  is  the 
acknowledged  royal  seed  of  medicine  which  already 
sits  upon  its  throne. 

What  does  vaccination  do?  The  infants  are,indeed, 
appointed  to  die  in  time  of  the  reigning  disease  of  their 
lives ;  but  this  disease  is  inscrutable  for  the  most 
part  until  its  period  for  manifestation  arrives.  They 
look  tolerably  healthy;  and  if  medical  inquiry  went 
strictly  back  into  the  history  of  parents  and  ancestors, 
the  pick  and  choice  of  infants  left  to  vaccinate  from 
among  the  poor  would  be  very  small.  If  some  of 
our  kings  when  infants  had  been  straitly  canvassed, 
no  far-seeing  decent  beggar  would  have  been  vacci- 
nated from  their  veins.  But  vaccination  shuts  its 
eyes,  and  takes  its  way. 

The  consequence  is,  that  breaking  down  the 
divine  law  of  keeping  evils  separate,  of  imprisonino* 
them  in  families,  vaccination  mingles  in  a  communism 
of  blood  the  taints  of  the  community.  Every 
hereditary  sewer  opens  up  into  every  nursery;  nay, 
into  each  infant's  very  heart.  All  ferments  of 
disease  are  poured  by  the  healing  art  through  the 
physical  nature  of  the  people  at  the  tenderest  ao-e. 
An  antichrist  is  reached  here  when  medicine  says, 
through  the  penal  State,  '^Suflfer  little  children  to 
come  unto  me." 

Now  the  statistic  to  be  worked  out  by  the 
Statistical  and  Epidemiological  Societies,  is  the  fol- 
lowing :  If  seven  infants  die  every  week  of  syphilis 
in  London,  how  many  are  left  alive  impregnated  with 
the  same  disease  ;  how  many  of  these  are  ignorantly 
vaccinated  from ;  what  is  the  natural  increase  of 
syphilis  thus  ;  and  so  on,  and  so  on  ;  what  is  the 
formula  of  progression,  and  how  long  will  it  take  to 
extend  the  poison  of  syphilis  to  the  entire  population  ? 


30 


DEC  A  Y  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE, 


DECA  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 


31 


f 


And  the  like  with  every  other  disease  :  standing  on 
its  own  first  figures,  how  long  a  time  will  it  take  to 
universalize  consumption,  scrofula,  cancer,  arthritic 
poison,  insanity,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  until  no  vaccinated 
person  is  left  who  is  not  infested  by  all  the  con- 
tagious of  the  time  ?  It  is  impossible  to  elude  this 
result.  The  consequences  to  the  population  may 
appear  at  a  distance  from  their  causes,  and  look 
quite  novel,  as  effects  develop  themselves  slowly; 
but  they  are  as  sure  as  fate.  Only  note,  that  the 
conditions  being  comparatively  new,  of  a  popula- 
tion subtly  poisoned  with  venom  put  into  the  blood, 
careful  study  is  necessary  to  trace  and  allocate  the 
results,  which  are  not  similar  to  anything  that  the 
past  has  furnished. 

In  passing  we  note  the  plain  fact,  that  as  inherited 
constitutional  diseases  render  acute  temporary  mala- 
dies more  intractable  and  fatal,  so  the  injection  and 
ingeneration  of  a  plane  of  constitutional  diseases 
artificially  communicated  by  vaccination,  imparts  to 
the  diseases  of  childhood  a  terrible  depth  of  mortality, 
and  thus  gives  dentition,  measles,  whooping-cough, 
scarlatina,  a  power  of  destruction  which  they  would 
never  have  in  unvaccinated  infants.  Note  also  that 
vaccination  is  done  just  at  the  period  when  disease 
may  be  expected ;  childhood  and  old  age  standing 
Ulone  as  periods  in  this  respect. 

The  medical  profession  puts  in  only  one  plea  in 
abatement  of  the  plain  inference,  of  universal  com- 
munication of  hereditary  taints, — that  if  no  ^'  blood  " 
is  drawn  in  the  act  of  vaccination,  the  vaccine  disease 
alone  is  communicated,  and  the  constitution  of  the 
vaccinifer  is  left  out.  Passing  by  the  fact  of  numer- 
ous cases  of  syphilitic  and  other  infection  occurring 
from  vaccination,  and  which  are   attempted  to   be 


accounted  for  on  the  ground  that  blood  has   been 
drawn,  or  rather,  which  are  for  the  most  part  denied 
point  blank  by  the  vaccinators, — what  probability  is 
there  in  common  sense  that  a  vesicle  on  a  syphilitic 
arm  should  not  carry  the  syphilis  into  the  second 
infant's  system,  and  infect  its  blood  ?     No  profession 
but  a  crowned  fool  would  dare  the  risk.     For  every 
drop  of  lymph  in  the  body  is  in  rapport  with  the 
entire   blood,  and   by  its   contents   commands   and 
modifies  the  state  of  the  blood.     The  medical  hypo- 
thesis would  make  it  appear  to  be  unimportant  to 
select  infants  for  vaccinating  from,  carefully  ;    the 
only  necessary  point  being  to  take    care  that  the 
puncture  is  bloodless.      May  we  not  here  chronicle 
corporate  blindness  as  well  as  hardness  of  heart?     Is 
it  possible  that  the  English  people  can  allow,  that 
Avith  a  mind  such  as  this  reigning  in  the  healing  art, 
the   body   which   practises  it  is  making  strides  in 
practical  medicine  ?     But  a  word  here  on  the  lymph. 
Lymph-poisoning. — Coherent  views  of  the  human 
body  have  so  far  vanished  out  of  modern  percep- 
tion, that  the  place  of  the  lymph  in  the  economy  is 
overlooked.     Now  the  cellular  tissues,  from  which 
the  lymphatics  arise,  are  a  kind  of  terminal  sea  to 
the  whole  of  the  fluids,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  visceral 
lakes  and  rivers  of  the  body.      They  are  the  area  of 
a  universal  communication.     In  them  especially  the 
body  is  materially  continuous.     They  reign  through- 
out  the  conglobate   glands,  are   present  in  all  the 
glands,  and  are  connected  with  their  diseases.     And 
yielding  their  lymph  to  the  blood  by  the  absorbents 
or  lymphatics,  they  communicate  to  it  their  states 
and  properties.      They   are   the  grand  expanse  of 
absorption.     And  the  lymph,  and  its  congener,  the 
chyle,  is  the  milk  and  impressible  infant  state  of  the 


32 


DEC  A  Y  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 


rest  of  the   fluids.     Swedenborg  has  shown  these 
truths  in   his  Animal   Kingdom.      Thus  he    says  : 
''  The  lymph  is  the  true  purer  blood  "  (vol.  i.  p.  219). 
''  The  cellular  tissue  is  the  emporium  of  the  lym- 
phatics" (p.  289).     ''The  cellular  tissues,  lympha- 
tics, thoracic  duct,  mesenteric  glands,  and  receptacle 
of  the  chyle,  are  all  continuous,  and  identical  in  use, 
structure,  and  nature"  (p.  222).     "  The  cellular  coat 
is  a  lymphatic  projected  into  a  plane"  (pp.  222,  319). 
Thus  the  cellular  tissue,  and  the  lymph  which  arises 
in  it,  pervade  the  constitution,  and  whatever  modi- 
fies them  produces  universal  visceral  effects.    Poison- 
ous injection  therefore  of  any  kind  communicated  to 
the  lymph,  goes  always  either,  first,  to  its  own  elective 
centres  and    peculiar  seats,  as  in  syphilis  or  con- 
sumption ;  or  secondly,  to  the  patient's  weakest  part, 
evoking  his  tendencies  to  disease,  and  aggravating  his 
existing  diseases.     Hence   vaccination,  by   putting 
animal  and  human  virus  into  ''  the  true  purer  blood," 
and  into  the  universal  arena  of  it,  namely,  the  cellular 
tissue,  "  the  emporium  of  the  lymphatics,"  tends  to 
distribute  the  diseases  of  which  it  may  be  the  vehicle, 
to  their  own  susceptible  seats  in  the  body,  and  also 
to  evoke  by  its  incitation  the  latent  diseases  of  the 
constitution.       So   lymph-poisoning   is  worse   than 
blood-poisoning ;    because    the  sphere    invaded    is 
higher  and  wider  and  deeper  ;    the  effects  chronic ; 
the  means  of  elimination  incomparably  more  diffi- 
cult, and  often  impossible.     True,  many  infants  do 
not  suffer  appreciably  ;    but  we  know  that   taints 
may  be  years  in  showing  themselves.    Moreover,  we 
guard  against  causes  of  unhealth  even  although  they 
affect  visibly  but  a  small  number   of  the   people. 
Organic  molecules  in  Thames  water  are  under    a 
scientific  police,  and  rightly  so,  when  yet  few  cases  of 


DECA  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE.  33 

mischief  are  traced  to  its  effects.  The  common 
sense  is,  that  all  are  injured  by  unwholesome  influ- 
ences from  without,  especially  by  habitual  lymph- 
poisoning,  whether  we  can  trace  the  vitiation  of 
health  to  vaccination  or  not. 

Materialism,  we  may  here  coin  an  ugly  word  and 
say  ''  matterism,"  reigns  in  it,  else  it  would  be  seen 
that  evil  infections,  violating  the  skin  by  the  lancet, 
must  have  consequences  of  decay  acting  upon  the 
race,    although    these    consequences    may    deceive 
coarse  observation  by  appearing  at  a  distance  from 
their  causes,  just  as  the  influence  of   sewers   and 
their  connection  with  fevers  was  scarcely  appreci- 
ated   by  our  hard-nosed  ancestors.      Diseases,  we 
know,  maybe  dynamic  as  well  as  material;    they 
may  be  suppressed  from  outward  manifestation,  and 
fall  in  long  times,  or  even  at  once,    upon   remote 
faculties  and  organs.      The  vaccinated  syphilis  of 
one  organism,  passing  into  another,  may  not  mani- 
fest itself  by  eruption,  or  chancre,  or  visible  syphilitic 
taint  at  all,  but  may  fall  upon  the  nervous  life,  and 
be  a  raging  and  unappeasable  lust  in  after  life.     A 
keener  philosophy,  tracking  the  sins  of  the  blood 
through  their  career,  may  see  with  fatal  certainty 
that    one    set   of   patients   from   this   cause    have 
syphilis  in  their  brains  and  mental  faculties  ;   that 
another  have  it  in  their  emotions  ;  and  indeed  in 
any  faculty  that  belongs  to  man  ;  because  the  physi- 
cal organism,  in  its  health,  and  in  its  corruptions,  is 
the  form  that  determines  the    presence    of    every 
higher  faculty  in  the  body ;   the  higher  beino-  ac- 
cordmg  to  the  lower.     What  is  said  of  syphilis  is 
also  true  of  other  similarly-communicated  diseases. 
V  accination  extends  them  all  to  the  very  doors  of  the 
mind  and  the  soul,  and  injects  them  into  the  human 

c 


%\ 


. 


34  DEC  A  y  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE, 

race  through  the  whole  compass  and  complex  of  its 
nature.     This  is  medical  advance  into  us  indeed,  but 

if  great,  it  is  wicked. 

If  vaccination  could  give  no  taints  but  its  own 
animal  disease,  it  must  debase  all  blood,  or  mixture 
has  no  meaning.     It  is  a  law,  that  in  any  associa- 
tion, the  worst  and  meanest  elements,  if  first  ad- 
mitted, and  then  not  resisted,  gradually  corrupt  the 
rest   to   their   own   standard,    and   then  carry  the 
organism  as  a  new  quantity  by  its  own  gravitation 
to  a  lower  level  still.     This  also  vaccination  does  : 
for  it  mixes  up  in  time  the  whole  blood  of  the  nation, 
and   subtracts   excellence   as    a    quality   overmuch 
wherever  it  goes.     Now  it  is  not  wonderful  that  a 
profession  which  aims  to  advance  by  violation  of 
animal  lives,  should  be  blind  to  the  organic  fact, 
that  evil  communications  corrupt  good  blood,   and 
that  base  communications   embase    and   debase  it. 
At  present  it  is  a  profession  pointed  outwards  into 
grossness  of  thought,  and  its  eyes  are  in  the  ends  of 
the  earth  :  it  is  keen  after  sewage  gas,  and  typhoid 
germs  ;  whilst  by  vaccination  and  its  compulsion,  it 
pours  every  disease  and  ventilates  every  commonness 
through  all  the  little  children  of  the  land. 

Thfs  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  question  of 
vaccination,  because  the  object  here  is  to  show  by  a 
great  example  how  the  medical  intellect  is  vitiated 
and  deluded,  as  a  symptom  of  deep  causes  injuriously 
affecting  the  mind  of  the  profession.  But  the  more 
the  subject  is  probed,  the  more  abyssal  the  insanity 
is  seen  to  be.  Two  things  may  be  noted.  1.  The 
poison  inserted  into  the  blood  of  infants  is  fivefold  : 
First  poison y  the  matter  of  the  vaccine  disease  itself 
Second  poisons,  the  occasional  and  constitutional 
diseases  of  the  cow  from  which  the  matter  is  derived. 


BECA  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE.  35 

These  are  animal  poisons,  and  tend  to  assimilate 
the  blood  to  themselves  on  the  animal  level.  Third 
poison,  the  vaccine  disease  of  the  human  being. 
Fourth  poisons,  the  occasional  and  constitutional 
diseases  of  the  child  and  family  from  which  the  mat- 
ter was  taken.  And,  Fifth  poison,  the  gathered  taints 
of  all  the  children  through  whose  systems  the 
matter  has  passed  since  it  left  the  cow.  This  is 
what  the  healers  of  the  people  inject  by  law  into  the 
blood,  or  into  the  lymph,  which  is  a  higher  blood,  of 
every  little  baby  in  the  British  Islands.  A  five- 
fold coil  of  poison  within  poison  ;  a  fivefold  fang  in 
the  nation  s  future  life. 

Note  the  disregard  of  serious  physiological  truth.— 
In  the  human  body,  whatever  enters  the  blood,  be 
it  even  the  most  bland  food,  the  juice  of  the  grape 
or  the  pomegranate,  or  the  fine  flour  of  wheat,  be 
It  oil,  wine,  or  fig,  is  broken  up  first,  and  then' led 
mwards  through  long  avenues  of  introduction.  The 
most  innocent  food  goes  in  most  easily  and  first.  The 
police  and  surveillance  for  the  rest  are  exceeding 
great  and  many.  The  senses  electively  appetize  the 
fine  food  ;  it  has  to  pass  through  their  peremp- 
tory  doors  of  liking  and  disliking  ;  instructed  doors 
of  memory,  association,  imagination,  reason,  wis- 
dom, religion,  in  adults.  It  is  then  attacked  by 
digestive  salivas,  tests,  examinations,  and  severe 
juices,  and  questioned  to  the  uttermost  in  that 
degree,  which  corresponds  to  the  former.  It  is 
strained  through  organ  after  organ  ;  each  a  tribunal 
of  more  than  social  exactitude.  It  is  absorbed  by 
the  finest  systems  of  choice  in  pore  and  vessel, 
organic  judgment  sitting  in  every  corner,  and  pre- 
siding over  each  inner  doorway.  It  is  submitted  to 
glandular   and    lung   purifications,    and    their  fur- 


36 


DEC  A  Y  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE, 


naces  of  trials  and  eliminations.  At  last  it  is 
weighed  in  the  balances,  and  minted,  by  supreme 
nerve  wisdoms  ;  and  only  after  all  these  processes  is 
it  admitted  into  the  orolden  blood.  This  of  the  best 
food,  such  as  good  and  wise  men  eat.  The  worst 
food  is  made  the  best  of  by  a  constant  passage 
through  bodily  mercies  and  mitigations  ;  a  no  less 
sedulous  though  a  penal  process.  This  is  physio- 
logy, and  divine  human  decency,  and  like  a  man  s 
life.  Vaccination  traverses  and  tramples  upon  all 
these  safeguards  and  wisdoms  ;  it  goes  direct  to  the 
blood,  or,  still  worse,  to  the  lymph,  and  not  with 
food ;  it  puts  poison,  introduced  by  puncture,  and 
that  has  no  test  applicable  to  it,  and  can  have  no 
character  given  to  it  but  that  it  is  fivefold  animal 
and  human  poison,  at  a.  blow  into  the  very  centre, 
thus  otherwise  guarded  by  nature  in  the  providence 
of  God.  This  is  blood  assassination,  and  like  a 
murderer  s  life.  The  point  however  here  is  that 
this  amazing  act  is  the  homicidal  insanity  of  a  whole 
profession  ;  and  the  reader  is  requested  to  study 
the  correlation  of  this  sin  with  the  horrible  methods 
of  acquiring  physiology  now  in  vogue,  and  which 
surely  prepare  the  minds  of  men  for  similar  dark- 
ness and  its  deeds  in  medical  practice. 


IX. 


DECAY    OF    THE    OLD    MEDICINE. 


Symptoms, — Other  instances  might  be  given  to 
prove  that  some  powerful  unperceived  cause  is  at 
work  in  medical  life,  and  blunts  the  faculties  of  a 
very  humane  class  of  persons  to  the  true  and  full 


DECA  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE, 


37 


exercise  of  their  calling.  Observe  the  jealousy  of 
old  medicine  to  homoeopathy,  which  they  despise 
instead  of  studying,  and  while  they  crouch  before  it 
in  practice,  they  will  not  appropriate  the  dynamic 
virtues  and  the  blessings  of  gentleness  which  lie  in 
it.  Their  own  corporate  anger  is  what  they  feel  and 
know  of  homoeopathy.  Look  at  the  medical  grasping 
at  power  and  place,  that  the  dogmas  of  the  most 
fluctuating  and  uncertain  of  arts  and  sciences  may  be 
secured  and  attested,  not  by  nature  but  by  Parlia- 
ment. See  the  empire  of  violent  drugs,  of  quinine 
and  calomel  and  chemicals,  still  holding  much  of  its 
old  sway.  Mark  the  new  extension  of  opiate  de- 
lusions, the  chloroforms  and  chlorals,  which  are 
committed  as  a  habit,  and  a  destroying  habit  it  is,  to 
the  sick.  Look  at  the  vast  hospitals,  which  are 
medical  and  surgical  thrones,  whereunder  patients 
die  at  a  rate  unknown  to  private  practice.  Observe 
corporate  medical  secrecy  and  its  technical  pharma- 
copoeias, which  warn  the  public  from  learning  the 
mastery  of  its  own  diseases.  It  were  easy  to  extend 
the  list  of  these  grave  symptoms  of  the  decay  of  old 
medicine  ;  symptoms  doubtless  of  long  standing,  but 
which  show  for  so  much  death  in  the  light  of  a  new 
age.  Clearly  some  cause  is  at  work  to  keep  these 
symptoms  active  at  a  time  when  public  opinion 
descries  the  mischief,  and  when  the  pressure  of  better 
things  and  systems  from  without  abashes  it  and 
tends  to  abate  it.  Is  it  not  fair  to  suppose  that  a 
great  clique  with  vivisection  in  its  midst,  which  holds 
up  this  thing  as  a  way  to  truth,  and  a  means  to  good, 
should  feel  it  has  something  to  conceal,  should  draw 
darkness  round  it  as  a  mantle,  should  resist  question- 
ing with  nervous  arrogance,  and  play  more  and  more 
for  condonation,  and  for  governmental  power  over 


38 


DECA  V  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE, 


DECA  y  OF  THE  OLD  MEDICINE. 


39 


all  who  resist  its  sway.  The  dog  in  office  is  a  poor 
symbol  of  it;  the  torturers'  instruments  in  office  are 
a  jealous  and  harmful  person  indeed. 

It  will  be  said  that  few  medical  men  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  vivisection:  thousands  of  them 
would  refuse  personally  to  violate  any  living  animal. 
The  complicity,  however,  of  those  who  know  of  the 
thing,  and  yet  do  not  work  to  oppose  it,  is  not  the 
less  a  fact.  Violation  of  animal  life,  more  or  less, 
reiorns  in  our  centre,  and  many  eminent  men  adopt 
and  endorse  it.  The  lust  of  it  is  spread  through  our 
body  politic.  Its  suggestions  are  in  us,  its  doctrines 
are  in  us,  the  fruit  of  its  practices  is  in  us ;  its  dire 
cruelty  while  unresisted  by  us  is  in  us  :  and  its  con- 
sequences will  come  upon  us.  Our  plebiscite  is  in 
its  favour  ;  and  innocent-looking  though  thousands 
of  us  be,  we  must  partake  of  its  doom.  That  is  the 
way  in  which  bodies  of  men  suffer ;  if  they  are  not 
rising  to  higher  forms  of  virtue,  they  descend  to  the 
level  of  their  own  lowest  members,  who  give  them 
the  word  that  rules  the  day.     And  then  a  judgment 

comes. 

The  stupefaction  of  medicine  from  this  among  other 
causes,  has  stupefied  the  public  and  the  other  pro- 
fessions. The  chloral  of  medical  secrecy,  the  false 
honour  of  esprit  de  corps,  has  shut  their  brains,  and 
kidnapped  their  voices,  which  are  whispers  where 
they  should  be  indignant  thunders.  The  clergyman 
and  the  lawyer,  professional  themselves,  become 
accomplices,  and  refuse  to  make  up  their  minds 
whether  violation  of  animals  is  good  or  bad,  because 
it  is  a  medical  question ;  they  refuse  to  meddle  with 
compulsory  vaccination  for  the  same  reason  ;  they 
must  take  instructions  from  the  lords  of  medicine 
on  all  such  topics.     In  this  state  of  things,  the  heart 


and  the  conscience  as  guides  are  dispensed  with,  and 
Royal  Commissions,  in  which  the  offenders  who  are 
on  trial  sit  enthroned,  give  doubtful  utterance,  in 
which  good  is  cheated,  and  evil  goes  greatly  free. 

There  are  no  medical  or  surgical  questions  in  the 
sense  which  medical  despotism  desires.  Every  day 
of  treatment  of  a  case  is  submitted  to  by  the  public 
from  grounds  of  reason  proper  to  the  public  itself;  if 
a  doctor  proposes  to  take  a  leg  off,  the  patient  and 
his  friends  are  the  last  judges  whether  it  shall  be 
done,  or  not ;  they  are  often  correct  in  their  refusals. 
They  call  in  the  doctor,  they  dismiss  the  doctor ; 
they  are  still  sovereign  (save  in  parliamentary 
vaccination)  in  their  homes.  If  they  too  would  not 
be  accomplices  in  atrocities,  they  must  judge  for 
themselves  whether  the  things  we  are  considering  be 
good  or  bad,  right  or  wrong.  Continually  before  the 
bar  of  their  own  judgment,  which  reflects  a  judgment 
to  come,  they  must,  by  what  beats  in  their  own 
bosoms,  refuse  the  abominable,  though  all  the  Phari- 
sees of  all  the  professions  declare  that  they  speak 
blasphemy,  and  are  unknown  to  science.  Decent 
common  humanity,  which  is  sure  to  have  common 
sense  close  to  it,  is  supreme  judge  of  all  these  things. 
If  the  common  sense  is  not  yet  apparent,  let  the 
common  humanity,  like  a  naked  new-born  babe, 
come  forth  alone,  and  God  will  help  it  to  light  and 
to  victory.  One  infant,  it  is  said  by  Swedenborg, 
from  his  experience,  can  put  to  tortured  flight  a 
whole  infernal  society.  The  public  innocence  has 
only  to  look  at  the  violators,  and  they  will  vanish 
from  the  land. 


40 


EXTENSION  AND  DECA  Y 


OF  THE  OLD  SURGER  V. 


41 


I 


X. 


EXTENSION    AND    DECAY    OF    THS   OLD    SURGERY. 

Tlie  Influence  of  Vivisection  upon  Surgery  is  and  has 
been  for  Evil — The  first  duty  and  counsel  of  surgery 
is  to  decide  from  pure  humanity  and  its  wisdom, 
whether  operations  shall  be  done  or  not ;  and,  in  the 
sight  of  God  and  man,  to  refuse  to  perform  them 
whenever  they  are  unnecessary.  When  they  must  be 
done,  the  second  duty  is  to  do  them  well.  The  first 
and  principal  point  depends  upon  the  character  of  the 
suro-eon ;  upon  his  intolerance  from  the  heart  of  all 
cruelty  ;  upon  his  asking  himself  whether,  under  the 
circumstances,  he  would  have  the  operation  done  to 
himself,  or  to  his  wife  or  daughter ;  or  whether  he 
would  wait,  and  try  something  else  a  little  more  out 
of  the  common  than  cutting.  This  depends  again 
at  last  upon  his  constant  prayer  to  the  Lord  to  help 
him  against  corporal  cruelty,  which  is  a  danger  in 
his  profession.  Now  this  surgeon  character,  of 
humanity  reigning  over  and  in  the  knife,  of  human 
love  most  tender  in  his  steel,  cannot  coexist  in  the 
same  heart  with  the  admission  of  violation  as  a 
proper  practice.  No  man  can  serve  the  two 
masters,  unbounded  deliberate  cruelty,  and  de- 
liberate humanity.  The  cruelty  will  be  in  the  in- 
side, and  the  humanity  outside,  in  the  reputation. 
The  consequence  must  be,  and  is,  that  numerous 
operations  are  performed  in  direct  contravention  of 
the  law,  "  Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  others 
should  do  unto  you  ; "  which  law  is  the  bill  of  rights 


of  patients,  and  should  be  absolute  over  the  con- 
sciences of  surgeons. 

Passing  from  individual  cases,  the  contraction  of 
operative  surgery  within  the  smallest  possible  Hmits, 
the  regulated  contraction,  the  restricted  permission 
of  the  art,  should  be  the  normal  aim  of  surgeons  ; 
but  its  extension  in  new  directions  is  alarming. 
Chloroform,  humane  on  one  face,  is  inhuman  on  the 
other.  Patients  in  hospital,  once  insensible,  may  be 
vivisected  indeed;  they  have  no  control  over  what 
is  done  to  them ;  and  the  knife  which  is  presumed, 
often  erroneously,  to  give  no  pain,  has  on  this 
account  the  less  conscience.  The  cut  nerves  and 
flesh  are  however  there  for  life,  with  the  horror  in 
them  afterwards,  if  the  patient  awakens.  It  is  im- 
possible to  disconnect  the  strides  of  surgery  from 
those  of  animal  violation.  Two  such  things  cannot 
meet  together  in  the  surgical  mind,  without  the  one 
influencing  the  other  towards  the  permitted  dissec- 
tion of  the  livinof. 

In  private  practice,  men  of  great  mechanical  skill 
operate  enormously,  the  delusion  of  chloroform,  that 
nothing  is  being  done,  assisting  the  public  to  submit. 
The  excision  of  eyes,  useless  operations  upon  cancer, 
operations  disastrous  for  female  complaints,  prevail 
to  a  new  extent,  where  many  of  them  might  be  dis- 
pensed with.  They  are  lucrative.  Moreover,  there 
is  a  growing  practice  of  semi-surgical  operation  upon 
every  open  avenue  of  the  body.  Internal  medical 
cure  is  discouraged ;  and  the  nervous  diseased  con- 
sciousness of  the  sick  is  added  to  numerous  maladies 
by  the  internal  application  of  local  chemicals  and 
surgicals  to  all  the  available  passages  daily.  It  is 
well  that  the  human  body  has  only  a  certain  num- 
ber of  gates,  and  that  instruments  cannot  get  far  into 


42 


EXTENSION  AND  DEC  A  Y 


OF  THE  OLD  SURGERY, 


43 


if 


I 


these;  if  the  heart  could  be  got  at  from  without 
plasters  would  be  laid  upon  it :  the  throbbing  surface 
would  taste  every  drug,  and  surgery  would  assay  to 
mend  its  valves,  or  to  cut  it  for  the  stone  in  its 
ossifications.  There  would  not  be  an  organ  unvisited 
by  subtle  ministers  of  violence  if  only  the  organ 
could  be  reached  without  immediate  manslaughter. 
Judging  by  present  appearances,  internal  treatment 
would  not  long  hold  its  own  where  treatment  from 
without  could  be  administered.  External  treatment 
is  adjudged  to  be  comparatively  real,  and  satisfies 
the  senses  of  both  parties,  that  something  has  been 
done.  But  in  the  meantime  the  surgeon  has  not 
answered  to  himself  the  true  surgical  question,  Am  I 
doing  to  others  as  I  would  that  others  should  do 

unto  me  ? 

Surgei^,  on  its  had  side,  paralyses  the  patient's 
rational  facidty.—Few  persons  bring  a  formidable 
complaint  to  the  surgeon  for  his  decision  without 
fear  and  shrinking  ;  and  if  he  says  that  such  an 
operation  must  be  performed,  they  accredit  him  with 
disinterested  humanity,  and  they  either  have  the 
operation  done,  or  they  are  left  in  the  presence  of 
panic.  It  is  a  terrible  alternative,  and  the  present 
writer  has  witnessed  the  struggle,  and  seen  the  panic 
end  in  an  unjustifiable  operation.  This  is  a  con- 
sequence not  remote  of  unscrupulous  surgery,  as 
such  surgery  is  itself  a  direct  communicant  with 
cruelty  in  whatever  forms  it  exists  in  the  education 
of  the  profession. 

It  has  been  said  that  vivisection  improves  skill  of 
cutting,  and  that  it  is  humane  to  patients,  because 
those  who  have  frequently  operated  on  live  flesh  not 
human,  but  canine,  or  feline,  can  acquire  a  dexterity 
in  the  process.     So  they  can ;  a  cruel  dexterity — a 


great  proclivity  to  be  dexterous.  But  sooner  than 
acquire  a  lust  of  operating,  and  do  things  against  the 
Lord's  law,  it  were  better  that  they  remain  bunglers. 
They  would  be  thrown  upon  more  spiritual  ways, 
upon  hopeful  patience,  upon  gentle  means,  and 
cure  would  sometimes  meet  them  there.  The  objec- 
tion to  surgical  operations  performed  by  learners 
upon  living  animals,  is,  that  they  are  diabolically 
cruel,  and  destroy  the  heart  and  hand  that  does 
them.  They  destroy  the  hand,  because  they  cut  off 
its  communication  with  the  conscience,  which  is  the 
proper  limit  of  all  work  and  skill  whatever,  and,  in 
then  multiplying  operations,  plucking  glory  and 
pocketing  fees,  that  hand  does  much  evil  for  little 
good,  more  evil  than  a  bungler  could  eftect. 

But  history  does  not  show  that  the  rearing  of 
great  surgeons  depends  upon  previous  vivisections 
of  animals.  For  every  strictly  necessary  operation 
is  itself  a  fine  vivisection ;  a  beautiful  and  humane 
vivisection ;  a  thing  pleasant  to  a  good  surgeon  to 
see.  The  genius  of  good  and  use  comes  into  it,  and 
the  experience.  By  cultivating  this  genius  and  this 
experience,  under  the  Lord's  surgical  law,  ''Do  ^ 
unto  others,"  etc.,  all  the  skill  that  is  required 
will  come  into  the  fingers  of  the  operator,  and  in-  ' 
vention  will  flourish  in  his  mind.  Moreover,  the 
dead  body  supplies  a  perfect  field  for  material  opera- 
tions. The  surgical  gift,  availing  itself  of  that 
experience,  is  equipped  for  whatever  ought  to  be  done 
in  this  way  to  human  beings.  In  using  the  words, 
the  surgical  gift,  it  is  proper  to  recollect  that  many 
practising  surgeons  have  it  not.  In  conscience,  they 
ought  not  to  attempt  such  terrible  proofs  of  them- 
selves as  operations  upon  their  fellows ;  if  they 
require  to  operate   on   the  eyes  of  living  animals 


44 


EXTENSION  AND  DEC  A  Y. 


before  they  can  do  the  like  to  men  and  women,  they 
should  resign  the  field.  In  the  new  surgery  of  con- 
science, few  operations  will  be  performed  com- 
paratively ;  and  the  great  hands,  greatest  first  in  not 
doing,  will  be  able  to  manage  them  all. 

A  point  is  made  of  Sir  Astley  Cooper  experi- 
mentally tying  tlie  descending  aorta  of  a  living  dog, 
that  he  might  ascertain  if  circulation  would  be  carried 
on  by  the  arterial  branches  above  and  below ;  for  he 
wished  to  isolate  an  aortic  aneurism  in  a  patient. 
There  was  a  risk  that  circulation  would  stop  if  he 
tied  the  aorta.    This  risk  he  wished  to  eliminate.     If 
he  had  a  right  to  do  the  thing,  he  had  a  right  to 
face  the  risk,  as  he  had  often  done  before  in  surgical 
experiments.      Fine    injection  in  the  dead  subject 
would  have  settled  the  right  so  far  as  it  lay  in  the 
possibility  of  a  re-established  circulation;  and  the 
experiment  on  the  dog  could  do  no  more ;  nay,  it 
could  not  do  so  much ;  because  the  anastomasis  of 
vessels  in  the  dog  is  not  the  same  as  in  the  man  ; 
and  the  inference  of  the  patient's  risk  here  is  there- 
fore mere  conjecture.     In  the  modern  operations  for 
the  removal  of  great  ovarian  tumours,  probably  fifty 
per  cent,  of  the  patients  die.     The  surgeons  contend 
that  they  are  absolved  in  the  matter  of  the  risk,  and 
this,  though  they  have  cut  no  ovarian  tumours  from 
animals.    Sir  Astley  Cooper  would  have  been  in  the 
same  category  as  they,  without  the  operation  per- 
formed on  the  dog ;  nay,  he  was  this  continually  in 
his  large  daily  practice.     He  would  have  taken  what 
he  had  to  take,  the  risk  of  the  case,  and  accepted 
the  patient's  death  which  followed.     As  it  was,  his 
vivisection  founded  no  practice  of  surgery. 


EVIL  AND  FALSE  MEDICINE  AND  SURGERY,  45 


XI. 


EVIL  AND  FALSE  MEDICINE  AND  SURGERY,  AND  THEIR 

RULE  BY  FEAR. 


Vivisection  has  710  relations  with  trite  medicine  and 
surgery, — Before  penal  laws  reduce  vivisection  to  a 
crime,  this  point  may  be  discussed  and  settled  by 
tabular  statements.  The  tables  will  answer  the  ques- 
tion. What  are  the  specific  individual  points  of  good 
that  vivisection  has  contributed  to  the  healino-  arts  ? 
It  is  a  revolutionary  subject  to  broach,  because  it 
will  bring  in  question,  not  the  share  which  vivisec- 
tion may  have  had  in  suggesting  new  practices,  but 
whether  those  practices  are  good  or  baneful.  The 
medical  profession  on  its  most  delicate  affairs  is  at 
the  bar  on  such  an  inquiry ;  which  constitutes  the 
people  long  operated  on  the  plaintiff*,  and  the  profes- 
sion the  defendant,  and  humanity  and  conscience,  not 
science,  the  judge.  This  will  affect  the  equilibrium 
of  all  the  professions,  and  will  especially  shake  the 
autocracy  of  medicine,  submit  it  to  a  vigilant  popular 
tribunal,  and  shift  and  subordinate  the  medical  mind 
and  conscience  as  a  centre  in  the  country. 

The  writer  is  convinced  that  no  good  has  come  of 
vivisection  that  could  not  come  by  other  ways.  Such 
knowledge  may,  indeed,  come  by  two  ways.  You 
may  ascertain  that  an  animal  has  heart  and  luno-s 
either  by  opening  it  after  it  is  dead,  or  by  cutting  it 
open  alive ;  but  there  is  no  prerogative,  but  delusive 
knowledge,  in  the  latter  operation.  So  also  you  may 
acquire  skill  in  surgery  either  by  cutting  and  maim- 
ing the  living,  or  by  operating  upon  the  dead  sub- 
ject;   or  by   ascending  from    small    operations    to 


>^ 


«l 


I 


46  EVIL  AND  FALSE  MEDICINE  AND  SURGERY, 

greater  ones,  which  is  the  way  in  every  other  depart- 
ment of  life.  This  way,  the  opposite  of  routine,  is 
the  via  trita  of  the  gifted  surgeon.  Surgery,  there- 
fore, in  its  purity,  protests  against  the  horrors  of  the 
French  veterinary  schools,  where  living  horses  are 
cut  up  to  teach  youth  the  art  of  operating,  to  teach 
them  a  direful  routine.  This  gives  pupils  the  lust  of 
operating,  wiiich  is  the  demon  of  surgery.  And  true 
medical  practice  borrows  no  light  from  vivisection, 
or  from  the  poisoning  and  pollution  of  animals.  Medi- 
cine gathers  from  the  latter,  materialism  of  thought, 
and  chemical  violence  of  practice;  impatience  of 
natural  processes  of  cure;  interference  with  cure; 
the  lust  of  drugging  and  doing,  which  is  one  demon 
of  medicine.  These  positions  will  stand,  until  by 
tabulated  results  the  good  things  which  medicine  and 
suro-ery  have  derived  from  vivisection,  and  which 
could  not  come  without  it,  are  demonstrated  in  detail 
to  the  public,  which  is  virtually  called  in  where  daring 
evil  is  arrested,  or  practical  good  is  pleaded. 

But  the  tables  demonstrating  to  the  judicial  public, 
which  may  call  any  schools  of  medicine  as  witnesses, 
the  practical  good  derived  from  vivisection,  will  be 
incomplete  unless  they  are  opposed  by  tables  setting 
forth  in  detail  the  charges  of  evil.  These  will  con- 
sist principally  of  influences,  of  effects  upon  profes- 
sional character,  and  of  the  multiplication  of  practices 
on  human  beings  like  those  which  vivisection  does 
upon  animals.  They  will  charge  the  worst  routine 
engendered  as  a  habit  of  practice.  They  will  record 
the  opening  through  the  human  heart  and  mind,  of 
the  vivisectional  sodoms  into  the  operating  theatre. 
They  will  set  up  a  distinct  charge  of  the  existence  of 
an  evil  and  false  surgery  and  medicine,  and  trace 
these  corrupt  institutes  to  one  of  their  sources  in  the 


AND  THEIR  RULE  BY  FEAR,  47 

cruel  ways  of  an  evil  and  false  science.  Of  course  it 
is  open  to  the  defendants  to  produce  tables  of  the 
beneficial  and  humanising  influences  of  cutting  up  ani- 
mals alive,  and  to  exhibit  the  vein  of  mercy  that  runs 
from  their  bleeding  entrails  into  human  medicine  and 
surgery.  The  balance  can  then  be  struck,  and  it  can 
be  seen  whether  vivisection,  abominable  on  the  very 
face  of  it,  presents  an  exception  to  the  rule,  that  a 
good  tree  cannot  bring  forth  bad  fruit,  nor  a  corrupt 
tree  good  fruit. 

An  evil  and  false  medicine  and  sui^gery  gives  ivrong 
hopes  and  a  base  love  of  the  bodily  natural  life  to 

mankind ;  it  is  a  vassal  of  the  luxury  of  the  people, 

One  plea,  and  the  main  practical  plea  for  the  tor- 
ments inflicted  upon  animals  is,  that  they  tend  to 
mitigate  human  suffering  and  to  lengthen  life.     This 
is  here  denied  in  toto.     But  were  it  valid,  it  would 
furnish  no  excuse  for  committing  evils.     Life  and 
health  may  be  purchased  too  dearly.     A  man  who 
runs  away  from  his  place  in  battle,  or  from  his  post 
of  duty  anywhere,  may  purchase  life  and  health,  and 
retire  into  comfortable  quarters  for  ''  a  good  old  ao-e," 
but  at  the  expense  of  his  manhood,  and  to  the  ruin 
of  his  soul.     He  is  slain,  a  dead  man,  in  his  better 
part,  and  his  health  and  home  are  his  disgrace.     He 
had  better  be  in  the  other  world,  or  hobbhng  about 
on  one  leg,  or  gathered   anywhere  into  the  noble 
wreckage  of  fortune,  but  still  upright  and  entire  in 
his  spiritual  honour.     Medicine  and  surgery  have  no 
comprehension  of  this  plain  truth,  and' would  save 
their  patients  by  means  that  are  alien  to  common 
honour  and  honesty  ;  they  would  bleed  the  poor  into 
the  veins  of  the  rich,  and  leave  the  rich  poor  indeed. 
For  they  teach  the  axiom,  Life  at  any  price,  and  give 
a  value  to  the  natural  life  over  the  spiritual  life, 


48  EVIL  AND  FALSE  MEDICINE  AND  SURGERY, 
Which  makes  the  fear  of  death  predominant  and  con- 
tinual,  and  life  a  wasting  and  a  weakness,     ihey 
may  be  said  to  inculcate  the  fear  of  death,  and  to 
live   by  panic,  and   thus  to   increase   sorrows   and 
shame Jimmealurably.     And  this  leads  to  the  intro- 
duction of  any  arts  that  will  promise  rejuvenescence, 
and  that  will  paint  roses  on  the  old  rakes  of  soc  ety 
and  it  ultimates  in  the  hope  that  a  secret  may  at  last 
be  discovered  that  will  make  the  body  aiid  cadaver 
Self  immortal,  and  independent  of  the  god-f  chance 
and  change ;  that  one  lucky  bubble  f  „tl^«  P^^^ 
protoplasm,  and  man  is  "  lord  of  death       Material 
^.eans  after  material  means  is  tried  m  this  agony  fo 
life,  and  the  true  immortahty  is  omitted ;  although 
thi^  is  the  spring  and  source  of  whatever  life  is 
^vorth  having,  and  to  shatter  its  hopes  and  fears  is  to 
destroy  the  future  of  any  i^ce  which  stands  upright 
by  honesty  alone.     Purity  is  gone  out  of    he  world 
thus     Vaccination  is  a  case  here.     The  whole  race 
is  fouled  with  diseases  to  allay  its  panic  about  one 
disease.     If  you  can  only  get  rid  of  that,  which  is 
the  present  spectre  of  Fear  !    The  --e  panic  line  o 
thinking  makes  men,  under  medicme  attempt  to  eat 
themsefves  into  immortality,  and  to  drmk  themselve 
into  immortality :  it  makes  flesh  and  brandy  the 
sacraments  of  the  death-bed ;  keeps  wretched  bodies 
here  which  are  bound  to  depart ;  and  counterworks 
and  keeps  waiting  the  angels  of  mercy  and  life  on 
the  other  side.    It  is  because  evil  and  false  medicine 
encourages  men  to  believe  that  they  have  a  righ 
to  take   all    means  to   live   in   their   carcases    all 
cruel  means,  rather  than  accept  the  divine  risk  of 
livinc  to  their  souls.     Such  medicine   is  the  direc 
antagonist  to  the  Lord's  words,  "  He  ttiat  would 
save  his  life    shall   lose   it,    and    he  that  would 


AND  THEIR  RULE  Bl  FEAR. 


49 


lose  his  life   for  My  sake,  shall  save  it  unto  life 
eternal." 

It  also  follows  from  this  that  a  healing  art,  impreg- 
nated with  violence  of  materialism,  loses  faith  in 
spiritual  means  of  cure,  derides  them  as  nothings 
and  hates  them  as  opposing  its  own  gross  ways ;  is 
closed  to  human  love,  which  loves  the  whole  man  s 
health,  not  the  health  of  his  body  alone ;  and  has  no 
inspirations  from  above,  no  happy  moments  of  gifts 
for  others  ;  no  sympathy  with  that  Lord  who  made 
us  in  His  image  and  likeness,  and  who  alone  can  make 
our  arts  conservative  of  that  image  and  likeness  by 
our  obedience  to  His  will.  It  follows,  in  short,  that 
such  a  healing  art  is  a  bad  healer,  tortures  and 
shortens,  not  blesses  and  lengthens  life,  and  leaves 
out  the  marrow  of  cure. 

An  evil  and  false  Medicme  and  Surgery  fix  Fear. — 
Besides  every  disease  which  requires  treatment,  fear, 
adding  itself  to  the  disease,  and  locaHzed  about  it, 
is  antagonistic  to  the  skill  of  the  physician  and  the 
process  of  cure.     Now  in  many  cases  the  disease  is 
a  limited  material  thing ;  but  the  venomous  cloud 
of  fear  settUng  upon  it,  extends  it  about  through  the 
body  and  the  mind,  and  gives  it  a  portentous  circum- 
ference.    Faith  and  trust  in  the  Lord  tend  to  banish 
this  fear  with  its  miserable  anxieties,  where  the  mind 
is  willing  and  strong  enough  to  entertain  the  heavenly 
guests.     Where  this  is  the  case,  disease  is  held  at 
bay,  and  confined  to  its  real  dimensions ;  and  it  often 
leaves  the  organism  where  it  has  no  encouragement, 
attacked  and  routed  by  the  interior  health.     Mere 
cheerfulness  from  a  high  source  can  sometimes  smile 
away  monsters  from  the  body.     But  all  this  spring  of 
well-being  is  attacked  by  materialism,  which  finds  in 
every  symptom  only  fresh  food  for  violent  appliances; 


D 


so 


THE  CIRCULATION  OF  EVIL, 


THE  CIRCULATION  OF  EVIL. 


51 


by  its  paraphernalia  of  examination  imports  new 
panics  into  the  suffering  frame,  and  fixes  as  morbid 
substances  the  shadows  of  weakness.  If  materiahsm 
does  this,  vivisection,  which  is  the  breaking  open  of 
life  to  prove  with  fingers  and  eyes  what  life  is,  and 
which  is  therefore  malignant  materialism,  with  a  main 
end  to  violate  organization,  stands  at  the  fountain- 
head  of  the  causes  which  make  evil  and  false  medi- 
cine into  the  destroyer  not  only  of  the  body,  but  of 
the  mind  in  the  body,  of  the  sick.  It  is  the  last 
pungency  and  injecting  cobra  tooth  of  all  such  art. 

And  such  materialism,  with  such  an  inspiration 
behind  it,  breaks  down  altogether  any  final  hope  of 
the  cure  of  the  great  foundations  of  disease.  For 
it  is  a  rule,  borne  out  by  sacred  history  and  expe- 
rience, that  the  more  powerful  the  healing  Word  is, 
the  more  merely  symptomatic  and  circumferential 
the  whole  disease  becomes,  and  retreats  to  a  greater 
depth  before  the  virtue,  until  at  length  physical  ill 
is  shown,  by  such  regulated  defeat,  to  have  none 
but  a  spiritual  substance  ;  whereas  this  materialism 
aggravates  disease,  being  at  one  with  all  corruption, 
and  vice  goes  out  of  it,  and  fills  the  measures  of 
death. 

XII. 

THE  CIRCULATION  OF  EVIL. 

The  violations  ruling  in  Scientism  are  closely  repre- 
sented by  their  own  branches  in  the  life  of  Profes- 
sions.—Th'as,  violational  medicine  and  surgery  are 
extant  in  the  grossness  of  drugging,  in  the  physical 
invasion  of  the  body  on  every  pretext,  in  the  multi- 
plication of  instrumental  means  by  which  this  is 


ii 


accomplished,  and  in  the  spread  of  surgery  uncon- 
trolled by  conscience  ;  also,  in  the  obstinate  rejection 
of  mild  and  efficient  means  of  cure  and  treatment ; 
such,  for  example,  as  the  gentle  medicaments  em- 
ployed in  homoeopathy;  and  in  the  casting  of  those 
who  adopt  them  out  of  the  clique  of  the  profession. 
The  latter  is  a  social  violation  of  good.     Pollutive 
medicine   arid  surgery  exist   in   the   now  universal 
practice  of  vaccination,  which  poisons  the  whole  com- 
munity at  least  once  in  their  lives,  and  aims  to  do  so 
many  times  in  revaccination.    Also  in  the  congrega- 
tion of  diseases  in  great  hospitals,  where  they  are 
focussed,  and  whence  they  are  extended  on  the  wings 
of  the  air,  and  on  the  greater  wings  of  panic.     One 
mental  domain  of  this  evil  branch  lies  in  the  terrors 
which  medicine  inspires  about  diseases  to  come,  and 
in  the  operation  of  these  terrors  upon  the  public  as 
motives  for  building  new  hospitals  by  private  begging 
and  State  or  county  aid.    These  are  artificial  infesta- 
tions and  pollutions  of  the  peace  of  the  general  health. 
Adulterine  medicine  and  surgery  exist  in  the  aid 
which  medicine  affords  to  the  impure  State  to  pro- 
vide license  for  the  soldier  class,  and  for  whomsoever 
else  it  may  concern  in  garrison  towns,  or  as  they  are 
called,  ''  subjected  districts,"  so  that  brothels  may  be 
clean  and  prostitution  safe.     This,  with  numerous 
consequences,  comes  of  the  illicit  connexion  of  medi- 
cine with  the  State,  the  proclivity  to  which  con- 
nexion  is   engendered  by  evils  in  medicine  itself, 
many  of  which  are  fed  by  the  scientism  which  under- 
lies it.      These   subjects   furnish   studies   of  social 
physiology,  and  future  statesmen  will  see  their  con- 
nexions, and  consider  them  well.    They  have  already 
occupied   attention   in   these    pages,   but   are   here 
brought   forward    again   to   show   the    currents   of 


I 


!l 


r 


li  . 


52      VIVISECTION  CORRUPTS  AND  DESTROYS 

influence  to  and  fro  in  which  our  evils  live,  and  espe- 
cially, for  recognition's  sake,  to  track  them  to  their 
hearts  of  cruelty,  and  to  show  the  social  circulations 

thence. 

And  although  the  matter  does  not  yet  belong  to 
the  present  series,  it  occurs  to  remark  how  great  the 
need  is  for  the  British  nation  and  people  to  abjure 
the  responsibility  of  fostering  germs  of  evil  which 
have  such  vast  profligacies  connected  with  them  by 
ascertained  relationship.  This  the  State  at  present 
will  not  do ;  the  people  under  God  are  the  hope. 
The  first  step  is  to  insist  on  the  withdrawal  of  State 
aid  of  every  kind  from  science,  and  leave  it  to  itself 
The  second  step  is  to  discharter  medicine,  to  abolish 
its  connexion  with  Government,  leaving  it  to  be 
called  in,  as  the  private  physician  is  called  in,  when 
its  services  are  required.  A  new  public  mind,  and 
a  new  power  of  health,  will  follow  these  emancipa- 
tions, and  medicine  itself  will  rise,  like  Lazarus,  from 
its  grave.  Laws  of  public  safety, — where  necessary, 
penal  laws  forbidding  the  evils  spoken  of  above, — 
must  consolidate  the  order  which  enlightened  liberty 
has  begun. 

XIIL 

VIVISECTION  CORRUPTS  AND  DESTROYS  THE  PRINCIPLES 
OF  MEDICAL  AND  SURGICAL  EDUCATION,  AND  OF  MEDI- 
CAL RELIGION. 

This  proposition  is  a  truism  hard  to  talk  of 
because  it  is  so  certain.  Classes  of  young  men  can- 
not see  living  creatures  violated  through  prolonged 
operations  by  those  who  are  the  educators,  without 
having  their  minds  inured  to  cruelty.  It  comes  to  them 


MEDICAL  AND  SURGICAL  EDUCATION       53 

with  every  sanction.  They  think  less  of  these  deeds 
every  time  they  are  witnessed,  and  if  tenderness  of 
heart  and  conscience  has  anything  to  do  with  the 
healing  art, — and  it  has  everything  to  do, — they  are 
killing  the  root  of  their  own  calling  in  "  receiving 
bloody  instruction."  The  tree  of  cruelty  does  not 
bear  the  fruit  of  medical  and  surreal  service.  Full 
of  an  insane  ambition  to  know  at  the  cost  of  the 
worst  way,  vivisection  imparts  into  its  scholars, 
recklessness  against  all  flesh,  and  in  time,  money- 
making  out  of  the  careful  recklessness.  It  isolates 
medicine  from  the  Lord,  and  builds  up  the  student 
apart  from,  and  in  defiance  of,  the  first  law  of  medi- 
cine and  surgery,  and  of  all  work  w^hatever  :  ^^  Do 
unto  others  as  ye  would  that  others  should  do  unto 
you."     It  explodes  medical  education. 

Self-evident  as  this  is,  it  can  now  be  perceived 
only  by  the  public  ;  a  proof  that  the  whole  bitter- 
ness of  the  case  is  true,  is,  that  the  medical  and 
surgical  profession  can  no  longer  see  it.  The  body, 
as  a  body,  is  so  depraved  by  it,  that  common  vision 
of  right  and  wrong  on  this  point  is  lost. 

The  violation  of  life  by  scientism  strikes  medicine 
more  than  the  other  arts  on  the  religious  side,  and 
injures  its  highest  life. — Because,  from  lack  of  strong 
faith  in  the  unity  of  creation,  and  the  order  of  the  crea- 
tures, medicine  is  the  only  art  which  seems  to  have  any 
great  concern  with  organic  physiology,  the  professors 
of  this  art  appropriate  to  themselves  especially  the 
good  and  the  evil  of  physiological  methods.  Hence 
it  is  that  violations  of  animals,  seeming  to  be  medical 
methods,  flow  with  destructive  force  into  the  medi- 
cal conscience,  and  hurt  its  religion.  They  propose 
Moloch  over  the  spiritual  springs  of  the  profes- 
sion. 


54 


VIVISECTION  CORRUPTS 


THE  NON-MEDICAL  PUBLIC 


55 


M 


t> 


It  is  common  to  say  that  human  nature  repeats 
itself;  but  few  persons  recognize  the  repetitions  if 
they  are  correspondences,  and  not  literal  copies. 
Scientism,  in  the  violations  here  spoken  of,  that  is 
to  say,  scientism  averse  from  God,  is  a  heathen  cultus, 
with  abominable  rites  ;  as  much  so  as  the  Aztec 
religion,  in  which  youths  were  bred  and  kept  in 
ecclesiastical  menageries  for  sacrifice  by  the  priests. 
None  of  the  materials  of  such  a  cultus  are  absent. 
There  is  the  goddess  science,  man-made,  with  privi- 
leges over  life  and  death.  The  artificial  temple 
constructed  for  cruel  rites  :  cruelty  organized,  and 
rising  against  the  sky.  The  laboratory  of  violation 
at  the  top  of  knowledge.  The  honoured  priesthood  of 
scientism,  whom  to  question  is  laical  impiety.  The 
result  is  accepted  agonies,  spilt  blood,  and  propitiated 
yet  ever  hungry  goddess.  Great  popular  assem- 
blies, British  Associations,  hushed,  or  plaudant, 
around  the  ministers  of  the  violational  church.  In 
short,  the  selfhood  goldenly  accoutred  as  high  priest 
of  nature,  and  sacrificing  humanity,  love,  and  kind- 
ness, to  evil,  false  and  foolish  ambitions  which  are 
the  inevitable  gods  when  the  Lord  God  Almighty 
is  displaced. 

This  cultus,  this  evil  religion,  subsists  in  the  heart 
of  medicine,  until  by  private  and  public  repentance 
it  is  cast  out  as  abominable  sin.  The  practices  can 
first  be  disallowed  and  cast  out ;  and  the  medical 
societies  of  the  kingdom  have  this  battle  to  fight. 
They  will  then  see  more  clearly  the  infernal  root ; 
and  afterwards  scientism,  as  self-love,  will  come 
before  the  bar  of  consciences  and  societies,  and  be 
striven  with  for  many  a  long  year  before  its  pride  is 
subdued,  for  this  belongs  to  the  deeper  evils  of  the 
heart. 


XIV. 

VIVISECTION    CORRUPTS    AND    HARDENS    THE     NON-MEDICAL 

PUBLIC. 

Are  these  subtleties  ?  Or  are  they  broad  but 
stoutly-denied  and  well-derided  facts  ?  Has  the  cut- 
ting up  of  animals  alive  any  such  long  cords  of  com- 
munication with  the  profession,  society  at  large, 
and  Parliament,  as  is  here  asserted  ?  The  thinof 
being  diabolical  in  its  inception,  execution,  organiza- 
tion, and  angers  of  defence,  for  vivisection  is  white 
with  many  furies,  look  how  the  case  stands  with  its 
associations.  It  sits  in  the  halls  of  science  ;  presides 
over  her  assemblies ;  lives  about  royal  courts,  and 
frequents  the  tables  of  the  great ;  and  scientific 
ladies  improving  grace  softly  regret  its  necessity, 
while  agreeing  that  science  must  be  served  first,  and 
humanity  be  thought  of  afterwards.  This  amounts  to 
an  influence  which  extends  to  all  classes  of  the  people. 
Take  any  other  great  and  unnatural  wickedness  ; 
and  suppose  that  the  well-known  doer  and  repeater 
of  it  is  always  in  the  foremost  rank  of  the  best 
society  ;  that  the  good  and  distinguished  women  of 
the  country  are  about  him  as  an  equal ;  and  that  he 
is  the  confidential  adviser  of  a  large  circle  in  public 
and  private  affairs.  Suppose  further  that  there  are 
many  such  men,  polished  in  the  wickedness,  and 
great  in  the  society ;  and  where  then  is  the  society 
going  to  ?  Clearly  it  will  do  things  on  the  same  level 
of  evil  as  that  to  which  it  has  descended  in  these 
voluntary  associations  which  the  men  described.  So 
in  vivisection.     There  is  no  subtlety  in  tracing  its 


*t 


S6 


VIVISECTION  CORRUPTS 


THE  NON-MEDICAL  PUBLIC. 


57 


II' 


111 


influence  through  every  profession  which  has  not  as 
a  body  denounced  it.  At  this  moment  it  is  the  sin 
of  England  herself.  With  few  exceptions,  the  great 
organs  of  the  press,  markedly  the  chief  London 
newspapers,  are  apathetic  to  its  influence  ;  it  has 
made  them  cold  and  cruel,  and  they  turn  the  sub- 
ject over  languidly,  as  if  it  were  no  concern  of  theirs, 
and  the  perpetrators  must  settle  it  among  them- 
selves. The  head  centres  of  vivisection,  the  Red 
Indians  of  science,  they  hope  will  not  scalp  and  tor- 
ture beyond  what  is  necessary  and  proper.  If  they 
do  anything  too  much,  it  is  a  medical  subject,  diffi- 
cult for  the  common  mind,  and  the  Lancet  must  look 
to  it. 

Royal  Commissions, — Among  the  public  signs  of 
increasing  hardness  of  heart  in  such  things,  none  is 
so  striking  as  the  abuse  of  Royal  Commissions. 
Some  great  evil,  such  as  the  maltreatment  of  women 
to  ordain  them  for  safe  abuse  by  the  soldiers  of  the 
State,  or  this  very  matter  of  the  violation  of  living 
creatures,  comes  before  Parliament ;  the  horror  beats 
in  the  public  heart ;  but  successive  ministers  of  the 
day  cannot  or  dare  not  say  whether  the  thing  is  good 
or  bad,  but  refer  it  to  a  Royal  Commission.  The 
very  entertainment  of  the  question  is  a  disgrace  to 
political  nature.  The  criminality  becomes  to  the 
perpetrators  less  criminal,  to  the  conscience  less 
hideous,  from  the  fact  that  a  Prime  Minister  has  to 
refer  the  matter  to  an  elaborate  tribunal,  sitting  for 
weeks  or  months,  to  decide  whether  it  is  right  or 
wrong.  Such  a  commission  marks  a  public  advance 
in  the  confusion  of  good  and  evil.  It  betokens 
paralysis  of  the  perception  of  good,  and  preparation 
for  the  legalized  preponderance  and  fresh  State 
sanction  of  wickedness.     Accordingly,  these  Royal 


Commissions  ordinarily  result  in  compromises  with 
public  sin,  and  in  condoning,  and  generally  compli- 
menting the  sinners  as  valuable  public  servants,  to 
whom  the  virtue  of  prudence  is  commended  ;  and  the 
evil  issues  from  them  in  official  guise  ;  red  then  with 
the  love  of  dominion  as  well  as  with  the  first  hand  of 
violence.  Recent  experience  in  two  cases  shews  that 
they  are  the  quiet  decorous  nests  in  which  the  eggs 
of  corporate  cruelty  are  hatched ;  and  the  brood  is 
transferred  from  individuals  and  professionals  into 
the  mind  of  the  nation. 

Wickedness  strangely  coincides  and  correlates  tuith 
wickedness  in  the  Physiology  of  Society. — Strangely, 
only  because  the  case  is  not  comprehended.  Human 
society  in  any  country  is  one  man.  Its  thoughts 
and  feelings  as  a  society  are  organic.  Tolerated 
villanies  debase  the  whole  body,  and,  in  the  present 
swift  movement  of  the  world,  at  a  rapid  rate.  Con- 
science falls  like  a  plummet  down  the  sea  of  evil. 
Practices  that  were  rebuked  twenty  years  ago  are 
now  in  the  market  and  the  forum,  and  have  passed 
from  manners  into  morals.  The  general  atmosphere 
of  the  State  blunts  each  mind  to  its  own  peculiar 
evils.  Wrong  is  not  so  wrong  as  it  was.  The  wife- 
beater,  the  garotter,  the  authors  of  crimes  of  violence 
and  unnatural  crimes  at  the  coarse  end  of  the  one 
man,  English  society,  receive  in  ^^ reflex  action " 
and  ''unconscious  cerebration"  the  fine  permitted 
cruelties  and  abominations  of  scientist  schools.  It 
cannot  be  otherwise  where  there  is  a  general  mind  ; 
the  great  spine  of  moral  habit  in  the  people  is  con- 
stantly transmitting  to  and  fro  impressions,  for  good 
or  for  evil ;  and  the  perverted  intelligence  of  organic 
centres  causes  spasms  of  murder  and  violence  in  the 
poor  ignorant  wicked  circumferences  far  and  wide. 


58 


SOCIAL  PHYSIOLOGY  BY  INSTANCES. 


SOCIAL  PHYSIOLOG Y  BY  INSTANCES. 


59 


i 


i 


Violation  of  life  hy  scientism,  unless  nationally 
reprobated,  despoils  the  efforts  made  by  the  benevolent 
against  common  cruelty, — This  is  self-evident.  The 
plea  of  societies  for  the  protection  of  animals  from 
mankind,  is  the  wickedness  and  cruelty  of  infringing 
their  bodies  by  ill-treatment;  such  societies  are 
founded  upon  the  perception  and  declaration  of  this 
truth  without  permission  of  logic.  Scientism  denies 
this  perception,  and  creates  a  factory  and  arsenal  of 
cruelty  out  of  the  denial.  Once  admit  its  foot,  and 
the  other  position,  that  violation  is  heinous,  falls  to 
the  ground.  And  as  scientism  works  by  plan, 
like  the  man  of  Bremerhaven,  and  the  animals  of 
the  world  are  in  its  design,  and  arts  and  sciences  are 
used  for  carrying  it  forth,  the  scope  of  torture  is  so 
vast  that  whatever  common  bad  men  do  to  their 
beasts  in  kicks  and  with  cudgels,  or  in  games,  is 
ridiculous  in  consideration.  The  greater  evil  in- 
cludes the  lesser,  and  demonstrates  it  into  rio-ht. 
Obviously  the  humanity  of  the  country  represented 
in  benevolent  institutions  is  confused  and  paralyzed 
until  the  head  of  this  crime  is  crushed. 


XV. 


SOCIAL    PHYSIOLOGY    BY   INSTANCES. 

Events  of  every  day  supply  instances  and  instruc- 
tion of  the  transmission  of  evil  to  and  fro  in  the  human 
body  of  society,  what  is  called  in  medicine  meta- 
stasis of  disease  ;  and  also  of  the  growth  of  evils  from 
their  first  wicked  thoughts  or  germs,  from  their  true 
protomorphs,  tiny  and  unperceived,  to  monstrous 
destructions.     E.  g.,  the  explosion  of  dynamite  at 


Bremerhaven  was,  it  seems,  the  failure  of  a  de- 
liberate and  carefully  mechanized  plan  to  blow  up 
the  great  ocean  steamers  full  of  passengers,  in  order 
to  realize  insurances  upon  the  loss  of  the  vessels.  It 
was  destruction  by  a  law,  and  involved  no  dislikes 
or  passions  :  simply  Self  gnawing  wealth  as  its  bone. 
To  it  there  were  no  persons,  but  only  gold,  on  wliich 
a  certain  amount  of  flesh  was  the  wart  and  the 
accident.  Now  here  was  a  demoniacal  possession, 
a  hell  with  lightning  for  its  fingers,  and  it  compassed 
the  planet  in  its  gripe.  But  it  is  the  same  disease  as 
sending  ships  to  sea  bulkladen,  or  rotten  ships,  or 
ships  too  heavy,  or  ships  with  destructive  cargoes  of 
iron  on  board ;  or  sending  them  into  Baltic  winters, 
and  realizing  insurances  upon  their  going,  with  or 
w^ithout  all  hands,  to  the  bottom.  The  one  wickedness 
flows  into  the  other.  The  principle,  the  first  vaccina- 
tion by  the  tempter,  self,  is  but  one ;  the  last 
development  of  it  at  Bremerhaven  looks  more 
shocking,  though  had  it  taken  place  at  sea  unwit- 
nessed, Lloyd's  page  would  have  been  clean  enough. 
If  biologists  studied  these  things  instead  of  the 
frivolities  which  now  occupy  them,  they  would  trace 
the  connexion  between  the  first  dream  of  wicked 
insurance,  and  the  ultimate  aim  of  general  explosion, 
as  clearly  as  between  one  tubercle  in  the  body  and 
lines  of  consumptive  families. 

Furthermore,  when  the  protomorph,  self  against 
God  and  man,  is  struck  upon,  we  connect  this 
wickedness  with  other  developments  of  the  same 
selfhood.  For  instance,  the  prosecution  of  the 
pleasures  and  rights  of  unruled  Self  existing  in  a 
man  of  an  imperial  family,  and  persuading  him  that 
a  certain  nation  is  his  to  be  under  him,  first  as  a  tiny 
desire  attended  by  pleasing  thoughts  awakens  him 


6o 


SOCIAL  PHYSIOLOGY  BY  INSTANCES. 


SOCIAL  PHYSIO  LOG  Y  BY  INSTANCES 


6i 


II 


I 


to  its  life,  brings  him  on  in  culture,  and  dandles  him 
in  the  good  he  will  do.  This  ends  in  great  massacres, 
in  a  nation  emptied  of  its  own  mind,  and  filled  with 
his  selfhood,  in  wars  and  countless  murders  to 
aggrandize  and  protect  that  self;  and  at  last  in  his 
self-deification  as  the  saviour  of  society,  when  his 
godhood  makes  a  heaven  out  of  his  sin.  This  self, 
this  calm,  crowned,  passionless  self,  which  has  its  ill 
work  done  by  instruments,  while  its  own  hands  show 
white  and  clean,  is  a  far  lower  deeper  degree  of  the 
same  quality  which  reigns  among  ship-owning 
wreckers,  and  in  the  man  of  Bremerhaven ;  a 
supreme  variety,  the  most  destructive  of  all  save 
religious  dominion,  of  the  protomorph  of  evil,  atheist 
Self. 

Now  if  these  great  patent  facts  were  studied  as  a 
part  of  the  organic  physiology  of  society, — and 
Swedenborg  has  given  abundant  lines  for  the  study 
of  them,  and  the  world  every  day  supplies  the  facts, 
— communications  would  be  suspected,  and  evils 
would  be  traced,  and  might  be  treated  by  states- 
men ;  and  then  if  these  evils  were  looked  at  from 
the  point  of  view  of  correspondences  and  correlations, 
the  diseases  and  taints  of  the  physical  body,  even 
the  deepest,  would  fall  under  clear  causation,  and 
into  series  and  order,  and  their  extensions  from 
germs  to  deaths,  and  from  one  set  of  organisms  to 
another,  would  no  longer  be  overlooked. 

Biology  of  Vivisection. — This  is  a  wide  theme, 
and  the  beginning  of  it  belongs  to  the  perceptive 
physiology  of  ,a  New  Church,  and  a  not  distant 
future.  It  will  occupy  us  presently  in  these  pages. 
SuflBce  it  to  say  here  that  there  is  complete  paral- 
lelism between  the  human  form  as  we  know  it  in  our 
own  bodies,  and  the  form  of  that  maximus  homo, 


humanity.  Now,  in  the  body,  if  a  malignant 
germinal  spot  commences,  it  perverts  to  itself  the 
uses  of  blood  and  tissue,  and  grows  in  size  and 
visible  malice  at  the  expense  of  the  organization. 
No  matter  how  small  the  spot  at  first,  how  fair  the 
cheek,  how  fine  the  limbs,  how  good  the  organs ; 
the  destroyer  is  there,  because  the  body  in  which  it 
works  is  one  and  indivisible.  The  spot  represents  a 
love  of  dominion  which  means  to  have  the  whole 
body  for  its  own.  Therefore  you  cannot  point  to 
hand  or  eye  as  intact,  for  you  know  that  destruction 
is  in  them.  Least  of  all  do  the  clothes  alter  the 
facts.  Just  so,  the  germ  of  wickedness,  planted 
voluntarily  in  the  life's  love  of  a  single  man,  occupies 
him  first,  and  converts  him  into  a  malice ;  and  then 
stands  as  a  dominion  and  a  destruction  in  his  pro- 
fession and  his  society.  You  can  see  this  best  in 
the  human  body,  because  it  is  there  a  sensual  fact ; 
you  can  know  and  perceive  it  best  in  society,  be- 
cause there  it  is  a  principle  and  an  intelligible  fact. 
You  can  understand  the  malignant  disease  of  a  mind 
better  than  that  of  a  body,  because  the  materials 
of  the  first  disease  are  intellectual  and  conscious 
elements.  Putting  the  two  together,  the  sensual 
diseases,  and  the  diseases  of  the  will,  you  find  a 
correspondence  by  which  each  illustrates  the  other. 
So  you  can  see  in  both  cases  how  malignity  of 
disease  is  born  ;  and  that  in  each  case  it  is  coincident 
in  extent  with  its  respective  man ;  in  the  body  with 
the  body  ;  in  society  with  humanity.  For  example, 
in  the  latter  organism  you  have  at  this  day  many 
minds  in  all  civilized  countries  which  are  voluntarily 
and  practically  familiar  with  horrible  deeds  against 
animal  life,  and  fashioned  externally  with  pretexts 
justifying  them.     Those  minds,  social  cancers  and 


62 


SOCIAL  PHYSIOLOG Y  BY  INSTANCES. 


SOCIAL  PHYSIOLOGY  BY  INSTANCES. 


63 


fungi  hsematodes,  are  cells  filled  with  dreadful 
imagery,  the  experiences  of  their  laboratories ;  not 
one  horror  is  forgotten,  or  forgetable  ;  the  life's  love, 
grave  with  habit,  takes  care  of  that ;  the  experiences 
will  exist  in  those  minds  here  and  hereafter;  and 
unless  repentance  come,  the  determination  to  con- 
tinue the  deeds  will  be  aggressively  perpetual. 
Every  dog  of  the  fifteen  thousand  will  live  in  the 
Florentine  violator's  aorta.  This  swelling  of  mortal 
sin  is  set  in  the  very  tissues  and  near  the  heart  of 
society ;  for  the  worse  any  such  thing  is,  the  nearer 
it  is  to  the  heart ;  and  whether  visible  or  not 
elsewhere  at  a  given  time,  it  pervades  the  world. 
All  social  diseases,  otherwise  superficial,  are  worse 
for  it,  being  founded  perforce  upon  its  circumstance 
and  terrible  base.  It  is  therefore  mere  physiology 
to  connect  the  wickedness  in  question,  and  especially 
the  intellectual  confirmation  of  it  which  makes  it 
presently  incurable,  and  the  professional  pride,  with 
all  murder  and  violence  done  by  coarser  and  more 
ignorant  men  in  the  same  social  body ;  and  to  see  in 
this  immeasurable  sin  an  infernal  stratum  on  which 
rest  those  more  casual  crimes  which  are  laid  hold  of 
by  the  law.  Crime  indeed  existed  before  vivisec- 
tion ;  but  we  signal  it  alone  here  as  a  responsible 
inheritor  of  the  ancient  cruelty  which  is  written  in 
the  history  of  our  race. 

T}ie  violation  of  animals  in  the  rites  of  scientism 
threatens  public  order. — The  British  people  has 
been  prominent  for  humanity  to  animals,  and  there 
is  scarcely  a  great  poet  or  novelist  who  has  not  left 
our  society  a  legacy  of  sound  regard  for  them,  and 
put  the  brand  of  denunciation  upon  wanton  cruelty. 
Therefore  as  a  people  we  are  tender  to  them,  and 
prompt  to  indignant  action  when  inhumanity  is  done. 


f 


II 


I' 


•a 


The  very  word  humanity,  used  in  this  sense,  marks 
the  high  kinship  of  this  tenderness  with  what  is  best 
in  our  national  character.  The  law  hitherto  with 
faithful  step  follows  this  kindness  of  the  people,  and 
the  magistracy  administers  it,  often  with  regret  that 
its  provisions  are  too  merciful  to  evildoers.  But 
here  comes  in  a  thing,  not  new  in  its  existence,  but 
quite  new  in  its  pretensions  and  extent,  introduced 
by  a  sect  of  scientism,  a  thing  beyond  common 
atrocity,  such  in  its  horrors  as  the  wildest  poet,  or 
the  most  fanciful  novelist,  even  a  Poe,  has  never 
dreamed  of  depicting  or  denouncing ;  and  this 
scientism,  cool,  red-handed,  and  dressed  for  fashion- 
able society,  meets  the  genial  heart  of  the  English 
people.  It  is  little  to  say  that  order  is  imperilled. 
Undoubtedly  we  love  to  abide  under  the  laws,  but 
then  the  laws  must  have  a  place  to  take  our  hearts 
into,  or  we  cannot  long  so  abide.  If  lynching  began, 
and  borrowed  from  Shakespeare, 

"  I'll  put  in  every  honest  hand  a  whip 
To  lash  the  rascals  naked  through  the  world ; " 

that  were  an  evil  end  to  the  law  itself;  a  consum- 
mation for  it  in  England — a  consummation  to  be 
deprecated,  and  by  all  means  avoided.  But  the  law 
must  be  prompt,  or  such  things  may  happen.  The 
sure  thing  is  that  conviction  for  such  offences  a<rainst 
the  violators  would  carry  laurels  to  the  convict  from 
the  hearts  and  souls  of  all  good  men  and  women, 
from  the  Queen  downwards,  and  prison  Avould 
be  triumph.  The  one  point  which  Parliament 
needs  consider  is,  what  amount  of  promptitude  will 
meet  the  case  in  the  interest  of  public  order.  A 
Royal  Commission  which  can  debate  the  matter,  is 
beside  the  question,  and  out  of  the  responsibility ; 


64 


VIOLATION  OF  ANIMALS 


but  Parliament,  representing  the  British  people, 
for  the  protection  of  its  own  supreme  interests, 
cannot  be  dilettante  over  horrors  which  may  evoke 
the  nation's  steel.  Indifference  to  drowninsr  men 
w^as  tried  with  PlimsolFs  case,  but  dizzied  hypocrisy 
reeled  before  him,  and  Parliament  was  eclipsed  and 
consummated  for  the  time. 

The  plain  fact  is  that  there  are  men  among  us  who 
cannot  be  trusted  to  have  any  cheap  animal  near 
them  without  a  horrible  suspicion  attaching  to  the 
case ;  who  can  make  no  purchase  of  monkeys  or 
other  creatures  without  shocking  the  public  ;  whose 
visit  to  a  "  doofs'  home  "  ous^ht  not  to  be  known  to 
the  neighbourhood  for  the  sake  of  its  peace  of  mind  ; 
men  for  whom  Nero's  ne  quidem  miisca  is  a  solitude 
and  isolation  which  alone  can  make  society  content ; 
men  to  whom  animal  life  should  be  cancelled,  as 
"  sleep  no  more  "  was  in  the  series, — "  Macbeth  has 
murdered  sleep."  We  may  then  surround  these 
considerations  wdth  the  certainty  that  such  viola- 
tions, whatever  law  may  do  short  of  suppression, 
tend  from  the  side  of  honesty  itself  to  the  violation 
of  social  order ;  and  must  be  dealt  with  from  that 
point  of  view   by  Parliament,  and   dealt  with   at 


once. 


XVI. 


VIOLATION  OF  ANIMALS  DESTROYS  ORGANIC  KNOWLEDGE. 


Vivisection  j^revenfs  any  organic  spiritual  vieivs 
of  the  human  and  social  bodies  from  coming  into 
existence ;  and  correlation,  not  of  brute  forces^  but 
of  hearts,  consciences,  and  deeds,  from  being  thereby 
discerned. — For   vivisection   lives   by   destructions, 


DESTROYS  ORGANIC  KNOWLEDGE. 


65 


and  is  the  record  of  isolated  agonies  and  spasms, 
whereas    the     correspondence     indicated,    between 
social  and  organic  truths,  is  the  result  of  a  high 
philosophy,  directed  by  adequate  genius,  and  regards 
living  organs  in  their  places  in  the  economy  of  the 
human  form.     That  form  is  the  literal  expression  of 
society;    and    society   may   be    formulated    in    its 
physiology ;  and  its  interiors,  dark  in  themselves  to 
the  senses,  may  be  made  translucent  and  shining  by 
the  lamp  of  the  greater  man,  society,  suspended  in 
their  midst.    This  is  progressive  physiology  ;  all  else 
is  inept ;  and  this  it  is  one  of  the  main  businesses 
of  materialistic  violation   to  crush  and   to  ignore. 
True  human  physiology  is  the  way  of  reasoning  from 
the  spiritual  to  the  natural  man,  from  light  to  dark- 
ness, from  self-evident  things  and  great   facts,  to 
organs  which  are  their  expressions,  as  it  were  the 
words  of  the  Author  of  all  these  substances  in  which 
man  is  conveyed  into  bodily  action  and  existence  in 
this  world.     He  is  spoken  forth  through  the  order 
of  his  body,  and  to  read  the  book  of  that  order,  with 
all   its    meanings   of    interior   faculties,   is    human 
physiology.     Similarly,  to  read  the  book  of  a  dog  s 
nature,  and  see  in  it  all  the  dog,  is  canine  physiology. 
And  so  on  of  every  animal.    What  is  common  to  all 
is  not  distinctive  of  any.      The  fact  that  the  liver 
secretes  bile  is  no  part  of  the  human  physiology  of 
the  liver.    All  livers,  of  men  and  snails  alike,  secrete 
bile.    The  hard,  but  inevitable  condition  of  the  human 
physiology  of  the  liver,  is,  to  show  that  the  liver 
and  all  its  functions  in  a  man  are  the  man,  that  they 
reflect  and  represent  him,  that  they  are  as  human  as 
his  face,  or  as  his  wife  and  children ;    and   more 
closely  human  than  his  cities.     It  is  the  soul,  and 
practical  belief  in  the  soul  as  beinof  itself  the  real 


E 


66 


VIOLATION  OF  ANIMALS 


man,  and  fuller  of  organism  and  order  than  the 
material  body  built  of  the  bricks  of  nature  can  be, 
that  affirms  the  possibility  of  this  grand  knowledge, 
which  makes  all  organizations  distinct,  and  shows 
their  correspondence  w  ith  their  inhabitants ;  and 
which  will  ultimately  make  them  self-evident;  so 
that  given  an  instinct,  or  a  passion,  or  a  faculty,  you 
shall  see  why  the  organic  machinery  that  carries  it 
must  be  suspended  in  the  corporeal  system  where  it 
is  and  how  it  is.  For  the  attraction  of  soul  to  organ, 
and  the  association  of  organ  with  organ  by  that 
attraction,  compacts  the  system,  and  closes  in  the 
whole.  The  man  is  the  result,  and  the  new  point  of 
departure  of  the  gathered  manhood  of  all  his  organs. 

The  dead  body,  human  anatomy,  offers  the  matter 
to  this  physiology  ;  the  living  body,  of  and  in  which 
we  are  conscious,  and  in  w^hich  we  abide,  gives  such 
physiology  senses ;  and  the  internal  rational  mind, 
believing  in  God  and  spirit,  and  human  society  of 
their  creating  and  maintaining,  by  potent  roads  of 
analogy,  in  minds  gifted  by  influx  for  the  work,  fills 
the  physiology  with  the  corresponding  higher  life  in 
every  department.  The  human  heart  is  the  form  of 
the  human  loves ;  the  human  lungs  are  the  form  of 
the  human  understanding ;  and  each  can  be  studied 
in  and  from  each.  There  is  no  inference  here,  but 
capacity  of  direct  knowledge.  The  master  of  the 
house  gradually  learns  about  the  house  w^iich  has 
been  given  to  him  by  the  Almighty,  and  about  the 
furnitures  of  the  house,  and  their  uses  to  him,  which 
are  the  reasons  of  their  be'nof.  This  aofain  is  human 
physiology. 

The 'present  so-called  liuman  physiology,  in  so  far 
as  it  is  founded  upon  vivisection,  contains  no  direct 
knowledge,  hut  is  the  inference  of  an  inference. — It 


DESTROYS  ORGANIC  KNOWLEDGE, 


67 


infers  from  animals  cut  open  to  animals  soul-tight, 
from  bleeding  fragments  to  happy  and  peaceful 
animals,  from  tortures  to  functions  of  happy  order ; 
and  the  inference  will  not  run,  because  the  cases  are 
hateful  to  each  other.  There  is  no  analogy.  Then 
it  has  to  infer  from  the  patched  physiological  dog  to 
the  dead  human  body,  where  again  there  is  no  human 
analogy;  for  everything  truly  human  in  bare 
mechanism  is  left  out  in  the  dog,  however  perfect. 
Then  again  it  must  infer  from  the  dead  body  of  the 
man  to  the  life  of  the  man,  which  dead  body, 
so  used,  imports  insurgent  death,  and  not  life. 
Analogy  fails  here  also.  The  cutting-up  of  living 
people  is  hopeless  at  present,  or  it  would  logically 
be  attempted.  Were  it  done,  the  vivisected  man 
would  offer  less  analogy  to  the  living  man  than  the 
vivisected  dog  to  the  living  dog,  because  there  is  so 
much  more  to  be  violated  and  spilt  in  the  former 
than  in  the  latter  case.  Thus  truly  the  gates  of 
science  are  valvular,  and  open  from  above  down- 
wards, but  cannot  be  opened  from  below  upwards. 
The  carriages  which  would  run  from  the  tormented 
body  to  the  living  soul,  in  any  case  are  no  train, 
because  they  have  no  couplings ;  the  engine  makes 
no  way,  though  it  is  loud  with  the  puffs  of  the 
vivisectors.  The  process  is  the  mysticism  of 
materialism, — methods  of  reason  perverted  into  tools 
of  darkness.  The  violationists  have  either  no  results, 
or  are  jugglers  and  sorcerers. 

In  the  boasted  clarity  of  evil  science,  in  its  passion 
for  exactitude,  you  see  as  in  a  glass  how  mystery  is 
born.  There  is  the  lust  of  knowing  at  any  price. 
There  is  the  vivisection.  There  is  the  large  limbo 
of  facts  of  life  and  animal  happiness  which  must  for 
ever  escape  the  vivisecting  mind.     That  limbo  put 


68 


THE  TRUE  MOTHER  OF  MYSTERY, 


on  one  side  and  ignored,  is  mystery  number  one 
haunting  the  beginning  of  this  physiology.  It  re- 
quires continual  denial,  or  the  physiology  and  its 
method  are  at  an  end.  But  there  it  stands.  Next 
the  record  gained  is  applied  to  man,  and  to  this 
record,  human  truth,  none  of  which  it  covers,  is  a 
set  of  manifold  limbos,  immense,  which  are  a  second 
mystery.  This  also  haunts  materialism,  which  is 
occupied  with  it,  and  so  alarmed  about  it,  that  its 
present  life  seems  taken  up  in  combating  these 
ghosts  of  its  own  murders.  The  works  of  leading 
physiologists  confirm  this.  They  are  versed  in  up- 
rooting superstitions  and  supernaturalisms.  Whose 
superstitions  ?  Their  own.  The  superstition  that 
there  is  any  life  of  order  to  be  got  at  by  the  scalpel 
used  on  the  living.  There  is  no  such  life.  The 
superstition  that  there  is  any  distinctive  human  soul 
and  spirit  to  be  inferred  from  animal  vivisection. 
There  is  no  such  spirit  or  soul.  The  superstition 
that  God  has  ways  and  laws  to  be  revealed  by 
vivisection.  He  has  no  such  ways.  The  supersti- 
tion that  there  is  a  God  knowable  from  nature. 
There  is  no  such  God.  No  one  else  believes  in  the 
things  they  are  denying ;  and  they  deny  them 
because  they  have  created  them,  and  must  by 
"unconscious  cerebration"  create  them.  They  are 
indeed  terrible  spectres,  and  shake  their  gory  locks 
at  such  physiology.  In  vain  the  wearied  physio- 
logist says, — I  have  nothing  to  do  with  you.  They 
will  never  leave  him.  He  is  a  practitioner  not  of 
necromancy,  but  of  a  biomancy  which  is  the  sum- 
moning of  the  living  by  the  dead  for  the  purpose  of 
killing, — 

"And  his  own  thoughts,  along  that  rugged  way, 
Pursue  like  raging  hounds  their  father  and  their  prey." 


GENERAL  VIOLATIONS  RULING  IN  SCIENCE,    69 


XVII. 


GENERAL   VIOLATIONS    RULING   IN   SCIENCE. 


Vivisection,  hy  reflex  action,  is  concurrent  with  a 
spirit  of  violence  and  outrage  in  the  sciences  gene- 
rally.— If  there  were  no  Christian  religion  to  be 
assaulted,  and  no  spiritual  conscience  to  be  slain, 
several  sciences  would  languish  for  lack  of  motive  in 
their  prosecutors.  If  the  Almighty  were  once  given 
up,  protoplasm  would  lose  his  amusement.  Its 
armies  of  inferences  would  grow  lazy  if  they  were 
not  marshalled  for  war  against  a  personal  God. 
Mere  nature  would  be  its  own  Capua,  and  enervation 
of  its  votaries  ensue.  This  is  a  great  subject,  but 
can  only  have  a  few  words  bestowed  upon  it  here. 

As  the  sciences  are  at  present  studied,  from  with- 
out inwards,  nothing  but  phenomena  can  be  regis- 
tered ;  and  while  the  field  grows  wider  and  wider, 
and  classifications  are  made  out,  the  student  survey- 
ing his  discoveries  would  fain  forget  that  their  scope 
is  still  only  of  phenomena,  and  that  living  causes  are 
not  indicated  in  his  process.  In  some  moment  of  his 
triumph,  sooner  or  later  with  different  minds,  he  puts 
the  life  of  his  own  imagination  into  his  systema 
mundiy  his  system  of  the  world;  and  there  it  meets  in 
his  mind  his  mother's  legacy,  the  Christian  religion. 
This  is  now  involved  in  his  science,  and  makes  it 
aggressively  alive.  Two  lives — his  own  life  and 
God's — are  striving  within  it.  If  he  can  push  his  own 
life,  his  own  selfhood,  through,  he  kills  the  other  life 
in  himself  and  in  his  science.  The  world  is  his 
animal,  filled  with  his  passions,  and  he  is  about  to 


70    GENERAL  VIOLATIONS  RULING  IN  SCIENCE, 

make  its  laws.  He  postulates  that  it  is  God,  or 
instead  of  God,  as  the  vivisectors  postulate  that 
tortured  animal  physiology  is  peaceful  and  happy 
human  physiology.  These  violences  of  the  mind 
reign  very  especially  in  physiology,  in  biology,  in  the 
newest  natural  history,  in  geology,  and  are  coming 
with  a  large  sway  upon  astronomy.  No  science 
wrought  by  human  minds  can  long  escape  them. 
The  greatest  absurdities  of  thought,  its  very  para- 
lyses, such  as  the  infinity  of  space,  the  eternity  of 
time,  the  impregnability  of  atoms,  the  constant 
unalterable  quantity  of  force  in  the  universe,  are  the 
table  of  the  laboratory  in  which  they  operate ;  and 
violently  taking  theology  into  the  meshes  of  their 
system,  and  binding  it  there,  they  cut  it  up  with  the 
knives  of  their  own  imaginations.  They  wound  the 
human  intellect  in  all  its  faculties  in  the  process. 
All  but  the  very  simplest,  who  know  nothing  of 
science,  are  liable  to  be  injured  in  their  life  of  life. 
It  is  the  poor  natural  man,  so  dependent  upon  the 
spiritual  man  for  everything,  that  is  here  vivisected, 
and  the  sacred  boundaries  of  the  soul  are  set  at 
nought.  Such  scientists  are  only  happy  when  there 
is  a  faith  to  torment,  a  doctrine  to  deny,  or  a  con- 
science to  harrow,  or  the  education  of  little  children 
to  ruin. 

This  state  of  things  is  wide  spread,  and  the  justi- 
fication of  it  is  the  pursuit  of  truth,  and  the  interest 
again  of  science,  and  of  the  human  mind  ;  just  such 
claims  to  our  regard  as  the  violators  of  animal  life 
put  forth. 

There  is,  however,  no  need  why  it  should  be  so,  for 
every  science  can  be  worked  for  God  better  than  for 
His  adversaries.  You  believe  in  Him,  in  His  Word 
from   the   beginning,  in   His  spaceless    infinity,  or 


GENERAL  VIOLATIONS  RULING  IN  SCIENCE,    71 

divine  love ;  in  His  timeless  eternity,  or  divine 
wisdom ;  in  His  incarnation,  and  in  our  redemption 
thereby.  These  are  the  creative  fire  and  light  of  all 
human  faculties  and  forms.  After  and  under  this, 
every  science  can  flourish  with  vigour  and  fearless- 
ness. The  use  of  the  imagination  in  science,  filled 
as  the  faculty  thus  is,  becomes  stupendous.  The 
study  of  all  facts  which  do  not  involve  wickedness  in 
their  procuring,  is  lawful.  Evolution,  as  the  record 
of  observed  phenomena,  is  perfectly  lawful.  Geo- 
logy with  millions  of  years  is  as  laudable  as  if  it 
were  geology  of  seven  days.  The  one  point  is,  that 
the  evil  heart  of  unbelief  be  kept  under  ;  that  what 
is  holy  be  not  invaded  ;  that  science  be  a  note-book 
of  classified  phenomena  always  acknowledged  to  be 
phenomena,  and  not  causes,  the  whole  sum  of  them 
no  more  causal  than  the  first  instance  was ;  and  in 
fact  that  no  inferences  upwards  be  allowed.  Science 
in  this  way  expands  the  true  theology  when  that 
theology  is  in  indisputed  power.  For  example,  with 
the  modern  knowledge  of  the  universe,  and  the  exact 
sciences  which  are  in  it,  if  we  grant  and  already 
adore  the  Lord  the  Creator,  we  can  acknowledge 
Him  as  a  mightier  Lord,  a  more  vast  spiritual  Person 
and  Father,  than  He  was  conceived  in  older  times ; 
in  so  far,  that  is  to  say,  as  the  revelation  of  Him  to 
natural  knowledge  is  concerned.  But  in  order  that 
science  may  be  privileged  to  this  result.  He  must  be 
first  acknowledged,  and  science  in  its  daily  work 
must  drink  the  cup  of  humility,  and  eat  the  bread  of 
practical  good.  If  she  allows  herself  to  question 
Him,  and  dispute  His  existence  because  He  is  not 
in  her  phenomena,  she  becomes  insane  and  cruel, 
and  in  the  end  magical,  because  she  will  then  pro- 


/ 


72 


EVIL  AND  FALSE  INFINITES. 


EVIL  AND  FALSE  INFINITES. 


73 


ceed  to  make  impossibilities  out  of  herself,  and  call 
them  things,  which  is  magic. 

In  short,  true  science  by  hard  work  may  know 
progressively  more  and  more  about  the  creation,  and 
this  exactly  in  proportion  as  she  gives  up  the  attempt 
to  domineer  over  thouorht  about  the  act  of  creatino-. 
She  is  not  creative  as  God  the  Lord  is,  but  studious. 
Nay,  more,  she  may  in  her  way  apprehend  somewhat 
of  the  process  itself  of  creating,  if,  after  bending  her 
knees  in  humble  prayer,  she  watches  in  the  sky  of 
her  then  large  mind,  the  brightness  first,  and  then 
the  revealing  personal  form,  and  then  the  message 
in  her  faculties,  creating  order  in  the  chaos  of  obser- 
vations, and  suggesting  the  lineaments  of  a  divine 
theory  coincident  with  the  Word  which  spoke  and 
speaks  forth  the  world.  True,  in  all  this  she  must 
be  passive  and  prayerful ;  recipient,  not  originant ; 
yet  in  feeling  and  acknowledging  herself  thus  created 
from  on  high,  her  consciousness  will  be  a  living  and 
loving  mirror  of  the  act  of  her  own  creation,  and  of 
nature's  beorinninof  also. 


XVIII. 


EVIL    AND    FALSE    INFINITES. 


Unlimited  ambitions  and  minds, — These  are  re- 
ciprocally the  causes  and  products,  the  seeds  and  fruits 
of  violational  scientism.  They  are  mortal  injuries 
to  the  present  faculties  employed  in  the  study  of 
nature,  for  the  spirit  that  impels  them  voids  par- 
ticular pursuits,  and  hurries  on  deliriously  every- 
where to  the  unknown.  They  amount  to  absence  of 
spiritual  and  intellectual  restraint  in  studies,  and 


consequently  to  loss  of  internal  self-control,  in  which 
case  the  mind  is  played  upon  by  its  own  inherent 
moods,  however  insane.  The  disease  is  twofold :  the 
first  root  is  that  falsity  of  eV\\falsum  mali,  that  you 
have  a  right  to  take  any  means  to  attain  know- 
ledge ;  this  hands  over  everything,  sacred  or  tender, 
to  the  inquisition  of  an  unbounded  lust  of  knowing. 
The  second  root  is  the  falsity  beckoning  onwards, 
that  everything,  and  the  whole  scheme  of  things, 
can  be  known ;  and  that  man's  power  therein  is 
infinite.  In  both  cases,  true  limits,  which  are  in 
one  sense  the  all  of  things,  are  denied.  After  this 
the  mind  has  no  standpoint,  no  fulcrum,  nothing  to 
exert  itself  upon,  nothing  to  resist  it,  no  skin,  and 
no  bones.  In  short,  here  is  the  ingenious  genesis 
and  human  type  of  protoplasm  ;  and  of  that  king  of 
nonsense,  "the  void  and  formless  infinite."  But 
now,  on  the  other  hand,  definiteness  of  study, 
finiteness  of  objects,  dutifulness  of  research  as  of 
every  calling,  is  the  way  and  the  life  that  leads  to 
the  comprehension  of  nature.  And  infinitude  or 
infinities  in  any  sense,  placed  before  the  mind,  are 
the  delirium  of  absurdity.  This  state  probably 
corresponds  to  scrofula  in  the  body,  in  which  boun- 
daries and  therewith  powers  and  states  begin  to  dis- 
appear ;  for  the  taint  shows  itself  in  softening  of  the 
bones,  in  the  running  of  organism  into  tubercle,  in 
the  breaking  down  of  the  blood,  in  softening  of  the 
brain,  in  escape  of  the  mind  into  idiocy  or  insani- 
ties ;  and  in  innumerable  other  ways  which  are 
recognized  as  decay  and  dissolution  in  the  body, 
while  the  mental  states  that  correspond  to  them  are 
regarded  as  powers  and  liberties  and  realm,  though 
indeed  they  are  but  interior  rottenness.  The  corre- 
spondence reminds  us  of  facts  that  are  forgotten  on 


74 


THE  CITIES  OF  THE  PLAIN, 


THE  CITIES  OF  THE  PLAIN, 


75 


lit 


the  present  plane  of  consciousness.  It  also  begins 
to  give  the  clue  to  scrofula  itself,  by  enabling  us  to 
tally  its  softenings  and  dissolutions  in  the  body 
with  the  wasting  effects  of  unscrupulous  and  un- 
limited scientism  upon  the  mind  and  its  pursuits. 
Science  also,  as  a  handmaid  to  intelliofence,  corre- 
spends  to  the  lower  functions  of  the  lungs,  and 
unlimited  scientism,  its  disease,  may  well  correspond, 
in  one  of  its  main  attacks  on  the  mind  s  integrity,  to 
tuberculous  consumption,  in  which  the  function 
immediately  beneath  respiration  is  subverted  by 
decay. 

XIX. 

THE    CITIES    OF    THE    PLAIN. 

In  violational  scientism,  obscenity  arid  visible  hor- 
ror touch  their  last  earthly  gratijications, — Touch,  not 
reach,  for  the  same  things  done  to  men,  women,  and 
children,  are  ahead  in  the  career,  and  from  those  who 
have  no  God,  scientism  wants  the  deeds,  and  clearly 
nothing  but  expediency  bars  them.  Here  occurs 
opportunity  for  saying  that  the  direful  details  of 
these  things  are  purposely  omitted  from  our  pages  ; 
no  reader  should  be  made  to  imagine  them  too 
vividly  ;  and  they  may  be  abundantly  read  in  the 
brazen  literature  of  the  subject,  especially  in  French 
and  Florentine  annals ;  and  also  in  papers  by  Dr. 
Hoggan  and  others,  who  are  labouring  to  abate  the 
practices.  Suffice  it  to  assert  that  the  facts  are 
horrible  beyond  imagination.  Dr.  Hoggan,  who  has 
been  through  three  campaigns,  avers  from  his  own 
too  long  experience,  that  the  preliminaries  to  the 
tortures  exceed  in  sadness  all  he  has  witnessed  after 


days  of  battle.      But  the  mental  filthiness  is  not 
often  noticed.     The  word  violation  carries  it ;    and 
to  that  word  we  are  driven,  for  vivisection  does  not 
embrace  half  the  subject.    The  field  of  this  scientism 
belongs  to  "  the  Cities  of  the   Plain."      The  i^lain 
here  is  atheism  and  materialism,  proclaiming  the  con- 
tinuity of  visible  nature  from  one  end  to  the  other  ; 
so  that  there  is  no  supreme  order,  no  building  by 
God,  but  only  things  on  one  level,  and  life  is  an 
arranofement  of  atoms  and  cells  flowing  into  con- 
struction,  and  into  decay,  in    an    endless  wash  of 
change.     Upon  the  plain  there  are  two  cities.     The 
one  city  is  the  doctrine  that  scientism  may  do  what 
it  likes  with  any  part  of  the  plain — the  doctrine 
that  scientism  is  omnipotent  over  its  effects.     The 
other  city  is  the  doctrine  that  the  plain,  that  is, 
nature,  being  all  of  one  sort,  without  ends,  purposes, 
or  degrees,  can  and  shall  be  all   known   by    dint 
of  scientism  racking  it ;  and  here  scientism  counts 
upon  omniscience.     But  let  Scripture  be  read  that 
records  the  olden  doom  ;  it  is  applicable  to-day  as  in 
the  time  of  Lot.     It  is  enough  here  to  have  indi- 
cated what  the  plain  is,  and  tliat  the  two   cities 
which  are  built  upon  it  are  exhibitions  of  a  filthiness 
which  is  under  judgment  now,  and  whose  end  is  at 
hand.     That   end   is   fire   from   heaven,    love   as  a 
destroyer,  and  the  later   stage  is  the  dead  sea  of 
knowledo-es,  around  which  nature  dies,  and  where 
science  is  a  death  and  a  disgrace. 

The  reader  can  trace  these  correspondences  in 
the  writings  of  Swedenborg,  and  he  will  begin  to 
perceive  what  a  terrible  militant  revelation  Biblical 
correspondence  is  of  the  states  of  men  and  things. 
''  The  grand  old  Book,"  as  one  gentleman  calls  it, 
will  prove  to  be  an  awful  new  book  for  the  coming 


76 


SEPARATIONS  IN  SCIENCE, 


SEPARATIONS  IN  SCIENCE. 


77 


/^ 


w 


\ 


centuries.  The  present  devastated  churches,  however, 
cannot  combat  from  these  truths  of  the  Word,  but 
live  like  incurious  aborigines  hutted  in  the  outward 
shadow  of  its  arsenals. 

Let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  are  not  mere 
similitudes  or  analogies,  but  that  they  are  corre- 
spondences, on  which  subject  more  will  be  said  in  the 
following  pages.  Now  correspondences,  according 
to  which  the  Word  of  God  is  written,  are  equations 
between  the  spiritual  and  the  natural  worlds,  and  the 
spiritual  w^orld  quickly,  and  the  natural  world  and  all 
the  circumstances  of  its  societies,  slowly,  change 
according  to  them.  By  them  the  internals  of  men 
and  things  open  into  the  externals.  Hence  the  two 
cities  of  the  plain  of  scientism,  its  dead  sea,  and  its 
scrofula,  are  creative  diseases,  and  as  they  come  out- 
wards, betoken  national  and  individual  woe  ; — such 
dooms  as  are  spoken  of  in  Isaiah  for  Assyria,  Egypt, 
Tyre,  and  the  like  correspondential  places.  In  fine, 
all  the  evils  of  men,  of  societies  and  nations,  are 
fundamentally  and  organically  treated  of,  and  traced 
into  destructions  in  the  sacred  pages. 


XX. 


SEPARATIONS    IN    SCIENCE. 

Science  requires  a  careful  study  to  sej)arate  its 
better  nature  from  its  modern  pretensions. — It  has 
been  indicated  wherein  that  better  nature  lies; 
fundamentally  in  humility,  or  limiting  itself  to  its 
own  necessarily  superficial  observations,  and  to  the 
hypotheses  and  theories,  which  sum  up  these,  and 
bind  them  together  in  comprehensive  rules  and  laws. 


Thus,  for  instance,  a  true  geology  will  limit  itself  to 
the  phenomena  and  order  of  the  changes  in  the  crust 
of  the  planet,  and  estop  as  any  part  of  its  own 
labours  the  realm  of  creative  acts,  and  especially  the 
impertinence  of  denying  a  creation.  It  will  deal 
with  natural  processes,  the  actions  of  fire  and  water 
and  air,  without  mental  prejudice  to  divine  pro- 
ceedings, or  the  love  and  wisdom  of  the  Lord  as  the 
world-maker.  In  this  regard,  nothing  that  can  be 
alleged  against  science  applies.  Such  science  in  its 
origin  is  divine  when  it  is  acknowledged  to  descend 
from  the  divinity.  It  is  a  lowly  work  of  the  logos 
done  in  and  through  human  nature. 

But  the  other  science,  the  perverted  science,  steals 
the  attributes  of  the  logos,  and  would  fain  appro- 
priate them.  It  claims  divine  powers,  and  uses  its 
own  power  badly.  So  far  from  being  a  pure  and 
ideal  goddess, — a  pure  organon  for  the  discovery  of  ^ 
things  as  they  are,  impartial  as  the  balances,  a  Lord-  -^ 
Chief-Justice  of  the  respective  claims  of  natural 
phenomena, — such  science  is  filled  with  temporal 
passions.  The  passions  of  personal  dominion  rage 
in  it ;  my  discovery,  and  your  discovery,  are  as  near 
to  blows  as  learned  societies  permit.  The  passion  of 
cruelty,  the  love  of  cruelty,  a  considerable  passion  in 
human  nature,  is  allowed  free  play  in  it.  Atheism 
and  materialism,  which  are  not  abstractions,  but 
fiery  passions,  inhabit  its  chambers  from  the  heart 
outwards.  In  short,  there  is  not  an  actual  vice  in 
man  that  does  not  get  into  this  science  to  find  a 
home  and  a  justification  at  its  hands  ;  to  formulate  a 
culminating  doctrine  of  justification  by  science  alone. 
So  it  is  necessary  to  be  careful  in  any  abstract  plea 
for  science,  its  rights  and  interests,  to  know  what 
science  you  mean,  whether  the  science  that  receives 


IM 


78        THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  SINGLE  E  YE, 

its  commission  from  the  brooding  spirit  of  God,  and 
works  as  His  servant,  or  the  science  whose  motives 
are  ex  se,  from  the  selfhood,  and  which  lays  hold  of 
truth  to  animate  it  with  the  lusts  of  fallen  man. 

We  are  livingr  at  this  time  before  another  flood,  a 
spiritual  flood,  and  that  strange  word  is  again  appli- 
cable, that  the  sons  of  God  saw  the  daughters  of 
men  tliat  they  were  fair,  and  took  them  to  wives. 
The  sons  of  God  are  divine  truths,  in  the  present 
case  the  divine  truths  of  the  sciences  as  allowed  for 
use  sake  to  human  minds  ;  the  daughters  of  men  are 
the  lusts  of  the  selfhood.  The  union  of  the  two,  the 
lusts  receiving  and  embracing  the  sciences,  produces 
giants,  Anakim, — mighty  scientific  appropriators  of 
tlie  universe  to  themselves,  with  at  length  complete 
denial  of  the  proprietorship  of  the  Lord.  Anakim 
are  already  born  of  this  infernal  marriage. 


XXT. 

THE    SINGLE  EYE    OF    THE    SCIENCES. 

It  is  plain  from  the  foregoing  pages  that  there  are 
old  sciences  with  wrong  methods  and  minds  producing 
them,  and  that  the  new  sciences  must  come  from  a 
contrary  source.  The  first  requisite  for  a  new  science  in 
this  sense  is  the  innocence  of  the  inquirer  s  mind.  This 
innocence  is  a  pellucid  eye  through  which  the  works 
of  the  Lord,  "  Who  is  Essential  Innocence  "  (Swe- 
denborg),  can  be  seen  from  within.  The  way  to  this 
recovered  eye  is  by  many  self-abnegations.  Evil 
kno\Yledge  must  be  put  aside,  and  by  repression  be 
held  as  forwtten.  The  unfallen  mind  must  not 
touch  it,  for  it  is  not  knowledge  but  seduction  ;  the 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  SINGLE  EYE.        79 

fallen  mind,  praying  and  working  for  regeneration, 
must  extirpate  bad  experiences  with  all  its  might. 
The  new  science  is  of  maiden  purity,  and  that  purity 
is  a  rebuke  and  a  destruction  to  the  aggressions  of 
evil  knowledge,  and  also  of  premature  knowledge. 
Prematurity  is  itself  an  evil,  and  destroys  the  order 
of  the  coming  state.  To  see  and  to  know  by  effort 
of  the  selfhood  what  does  not  belong  to  your  epoch, 
is  violent  decay  of  the  present  good  of  life.  Intel- 
lectual and  metaphysical  falsities,  which  overspread 
the  present  mind,  the  brood  of  "  intelligence  from 
self"  must  also  be  put  aside,  for  they  are  arrogant 
masters,  and  not  ministers  of  natural  knowledge. 
And  more  than  all,  the  lust  to  rule  by  science,  and 
the  persuasion  that  nature  and  immunity  can  be  your 
propei'ty  thus,  is  cataract  or  glaucoma  in  the  per- 
ceptive eye  ;  and  nothing  but  interior  blindness  and 
its  diseased  lights  can  come  in  such  an  organ  of 
vision.  These  points  have  been  dwelt  upon  already. 
The  cure  of  the  evils  is  mentioned  now  as  the  way 
to  a  human  sight  that  alone  can  be  ^^  a  minister  and 
interpreter  of  nature."  The  formula  of  it  all  is,  an 
innocent  scientific  mind. 

Here  we  note  aofain  that  largfe  tracts  of  knowled^re 
will  be  abandoned  because  of  the  evil  passions  and 
actions  that  have  transacted  themselves  therein. 
The  poisonous  ground  of  those  passions  is  still  left 
in  such  tracts;  the  pestilence,  the  owl,  the  bittern, 
and  the  wild  beast,  represent  the  activity  of  the  lusts 
in  their  final  state.  The  ruins  of  the  infernal  tem- 
ples and  palaces  must  be  quitted,  for  there  is  no 
health  nor  safety  there.  Innocence  cannot  dwell  be- 
side their  suggestions.  This  fact  is  represented  his- 
torically by  the  doom  of  Babylon  and  other  cities 
which  stand  in  the  Word  of  the  ancient  world  for 


8o  JUSTIFICA  TIOJ^  B  V  SCIENCE  AL  ONE. 

similar  evil  states.  The  plough  which  belongs  to  the 
whole  earth  cannot  go  there  until  great  cycles  of 
God  s  providence  have  wrought  their  purifying  way. 
What  that  way  is  no  man  can  foresee. 


XXII. 


JUSTIFICATION    BY    SCIENCB    ALONE. 

False  Science  complains  of  the  arrogance  of  false 
theology,  and  seeks  to  crush  it  by  a  corresponding  aiTO- 
gance  of  its  own, — In  regard  to  the  rights  of  cruelty, 
for  instance,  it  seeks  to  outlie  the  State.  In  the 
violation  of  animals  it  makes  war  upon  civil  decency 
and  honesty,  and  while  subscribing  to  punish  common 
men  who  overdrive  their  horses,  it  claims  to  mangle 
horses  in  unmentionable  ways.  Its  Vatican  derides 
the  honest  State.  It  traverses  the  hearts  and  heads 
and  order  of  religious  nations  as  with  an  assassin  s 
knife.  It  is  of  miraculous  conception  and  birth  ;  a 
fruit  of  things  evolving  themselves  from  what  is  be- 
low them  and  does  not  contain  them,  until  '^infinite" 
successions  of  incompetent  factors  in  the  fulness  of 
time  produce  science  ex  se,  and  the  scientific  Anak. 
It  is  infallible,  because  nothing  outside  of  it  may 
dispute  it ;  and  the  deaths  of  its  chiefs  do  not  alter 
the  validity  of  the  succession  from  its  founder.  Saint 
Self.  It  has  its  quod  semper,  quod  uhique,  quod  ah 
omnibus,  like  Rome.  The  dominion  of  its  tenets  and 
orthodoxies  is  the  practical  point  of  its  infallibility 
and  ubiquity.  That  never  changes,  however  its  dog- 
matic formulas  may  be  altered  from  hour  to  hour. 
It  claims,  however,  to  be  flexible  and  truth-loving, 
because  it  wears  so  many  dresses  of  temporary 
truths.     But  it  always  wears  three  hats.     It  has  in 


SCIENTIFICS. 


8i 


it  the  arrogance  of  Protestantism  and  Popery  com- 
bined. Again  the  Anakim — the  lust  of  dominion 
reigning  and  governing  in  and  over  the  love  of 
truth. 


XXIII. 


f   y 


SCIENTIFICS. 

Vivisection,  including  human  vivisection,  ivhich 
exists  in  posse  ivithin  the  present  practice,  is  the 
natural  end  of  the  evil  and  false  analytical  sciences, 
and  of  the  evil  and  false  analytical  j^hilosojMes, — 
We  purpose,  under  this  head,  to  interpolate  a 
chapter  on  scientifcs  generally,  and  on  some  con- 
siderations which  grow  out  of  the  subject. 

Now,  final  causes  reign  in  the  core  of  all  sciences  ; 
because  man,  the  author  of  sciences^  has  plans  and 
purposes  in  all  that  he  does;  and  purposes  are  final 
causes  as  related  to  action.  These  ends  of  science 
may  be  fourfold.  1.  Science  may  be  prosecuted  for 
its  own  sake,  from  the  love  of  knowing  the  facts  and 
relations  of  thing^s.  Manv  men  seem  born  with  this 
love  as  a  mainspring  in  their  faculties.  It  is  in 
itself  a  pure  eye  for  the  intelligence  of  nature.  Per- 
haps Linnaeus  and  Kepler  and  Charles  Bell  might 
stand  as  typical  instances  of  its  possession.  2. 
Science  may  be  prosecuted  because  such  knowledge 
is  practical  power  of  many  kinds  ;  for  instance, 
power  to  enrich  and  subserve  the  arts  of  life.  3. 
Or  it  may  be  prosecuted  in  order  to  see  the  Creator 
in  His  works ;  because  the  Author,  if  revealed,  can 
be  increasingly  seen  as  the  works  are  better  under- 
stood. Or,  on  the  other  hand,  science  may  be  pur- 
sued in  order  that  visible  matter  may  crowd  out  the 

F 


Ill 


82 


SCIENTIFICS. 


SCIENTIFICS, 


83 


invisible  spirit,  that  the  senses  may  be  enthroned  as 
the  only  faculties,  and  that  God  being  nowhere  for 
this  process,  He  may  be  denied  by  the  conclave  of  the 
atheized  atoms  and  substances  of  His  own  worlds, 
presided  over  by  the  selfhood  of  the  scientific  man. 

Here  we  deal  only  with  analysis,  or  the  taking  of 
things  to  pieces  to  see  how  they  are  made  ;  and  with 
evil  and  false  analysis,  or  the  breaking  up  of  forms, 
even  living  forms,  to  find  that  they  are  all  self-made, 
not  God-made.  There  may,  however,  be  evil  and 
false  synthesis;  nay,  there  must  be;  for  the  last 
stage  of  such  processes  of  science  is  to  put  the  self- 
hood of  the  man  into  them,  as  a  will  and  a  theory, 
as  the  final  account  of  the  matter.  But  this  by  the 
way.  Intuition  from  evil,  and  a  very  powerful 
intuition  it  is,  always  culminates  in  this  synthesis. 
Ego  et  mundus  mens. 

This  voids  the  love  of  use,  for  it  is  uselessness 
incarnated.  That  love  once  gone,  and  nature  handed 
without  remorse  to  the  dominion  of  the  Selfhood,  the 
love  of  scientific  conquest  and  possession  has  no 
bounds.  It  takes  false  analysis,  the  method  of 
pulling  down  the  building,  not  to  find  the  architect, 
but  to  affix  meum  and  tuum,  and  especially  meum,  to 
the  carefully  gathered  heaps  of  ruin,  as  its  starting 
point.  The  ruins  are  its  possession,  because  they  are 
indeed  its  creation ;  and  it  studies  them  as  its  own 
children,  and  claims  their  education  and  evolution, 
in  which  ruin  organizes  ruin. 

Now,  since  the  beginning,  science  has  been  studied 
by  a  class  with  these  ends,  in  this  way,  and  with 
these  results.  Especially  so  the  most  difficult 
sciences,  those  pertaining  to  man's  body,  which  has 
contact  at  all  points  with  his  mind.  Evil  and  false 
analysis,  originating  in  heathenism,  has  come  down 


as  a  stream,  always  with  violent  intent  against 
internal  truths,  and  has  broken  up  all  the  parts  of 
nature  to  which  it  has  applied  itself  on  its  passage. 
It  is  powerful  by  reason  of  its  deep  descent,  for  it 
comes  from  the  mountains  of  self-love,  and  foams 
through  the  magnificent  scenery  of  self-conceit. 
True  analysis  stands  indeed  on  another  track;  but 
in  the  organic  sciences  it  is  hard  to  find  its  face  at 
present.  It  results  from  the  course  and  antecedents 
of  the  worse  analysis,  that  a  time  should  come  when 
it  brincrs  itself  face  to  face  with  all  life,  Divine  and 
human,  attempts  to  bind  it  hand  and  foot,  to  muzzle 
it,  to  cast  it  into  the  scientific  trough,  and  to  violate 
it  by  every  instrument  that  the  fruitful  dreaming 
selfhood  can  invent  and  excogitate.  We  live  in  that 
age  now,  in  the  consummation  of  this  analysis. 
There  is  no  love  of  truth  in  it,  there  is  no  love  of 
good  in  it,  there  is  no  love  of  use  in  it,  but  only  the 
rights  of  science,  and  the  glory  of  the  individual, 
which  taken  together  form  the  last  pretexts  of  the 
infernal  man. 

Since  such  analysis,  animated  by  this  spirit,  means 
progressive  dissolution  of  all  substances  which  are 
submitted  to  its  process,  the  last  lower  thing  left 
being  the  hammer  to  beat  out  the  brains  of  the  order 
of  the  thing  next  above  it,  Swedenborg,  who  knew 
this  kind  of  analysis  as  well  as  if  he  had  seen  its 
developments  at  the  present  day,  predicted  in  his 
time  the  impending  decay  and  destruction  of  those 
sciences  in  which  it  held  sway.  He  predicted  the 
decline  of  human  physiology  wherever  this  course 
was  persevered  in.  His  words  are  memorable,  as 
follow:  '^I  have  now,  therefore,  ventured  to  attempt 
this  method"  (i.e.  analysis  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  uses  and  ends  of  forms)  ''of  discovering  truths, 


84 


SCIENTIFICS. 


at  present  deeply  hidden  under  a  veil  of  hypotheses. 
And  the  proper  time  has  arrived,  for  a  rich  store  of 
experience  is  at  hand ;  an  accumulated  heap  sufficient 
to  enable  us  to  build  a  palace  ;  a  luxuriant  field 
where  our  sickles  may  reap  an  abundant  harvest ; 
a  table  where  we  may  enjoy  the  most  sumptuous 
banquets.  Nor  do  I  think  we  ought  to  wait  any 
longer,  lest  haply  experimental  knowledge  shall  be 
overtaken  by  age,  night,  and  oblivion  ;  and  the  arts 
and  sciences  be  carried  to  the  tomb  ;  for  unless  I 
mistake  the  signs  of  the  times,  the  world's  destinies 
are  tending  thitherwards."  {Animal  Kingdom,  vol. 
i.  p.  9.) 

What  is  happening  now  abundantly  confirms 
Swedenborgs  anticipations.  In  spite  of  the  multi- 
tude of  small  discoverers  of  small  facts,  and  of  laro-e 
books  holding  them  for  a  few  years,  and  then  giving 
place  to  other  granaries  of  the  same  dust,  less  is 
known  of  life,  and  more  of  corruption,  than  when  the 
analysis  was  kept  in  straiter  bounds.  There  is  less 
commerce  of  these  maggots  of  fact,  with  practical 
healing  ;  indeed,  they  overswarm  the  mind  of  the 
physician,  and  do  not  fit  him  for  the  sick-room  ;  for 
they  are  the  active  bits  of  an  analysis  which  belongs 
to  the  grave.  It  is  superfluous  to  say  that  less  is 
known  of  God  in  such  analytic  sciences,  for  God  is 
known  in  His  works,  and  these  are  none  of  His 
works ;  but  wicked  works  of  men's  own  hands. 
Atheism  is  the  proper  and  final  truth  of  them  so  for 
as  regards  the  Lord  ;  the  merciful  truth  of  them, 
for  profanation  is  saved. 

In  fine,  the  moderns  of  this  school  have  created 
a  domain  all  their  own;  and  Homines  naturce  viola- 
tores  et  evolutoresy  with  evil  end  from  the  beo-innino- 
of  the   metaphysical   and    physical    sciences,    have 


SCIENTIFICS, 


85 


destroyed  God  in  and  around  them  in  order  to 
aggrandize  themselves  ;  and  now  in  the  last  resort, 
not  daring  to  consummate  their  plan  on  the  bodies 
of  their  fellows,  they  have  yet  brought  analysis 
through  all  its  disguises  into  the  dock  of  cruelty, 
where  it  fronts  the  judgment  of  God,  and  is  coming 
under  the  secular  police. 

What  a  light  does  this  receive  from  tliat  Genesis 
despised  by  scientists,  which  tells  of  the  consequences 
of  eating  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil,  with  "  Thou  shalt  surely  die  "  implanted  in  the 
day  or  state  of  it. 

On  the  contrary,  what  a  lesson  for  the  true 
analysis,  and  the  good  science,  to  persevere.  In  the 
first  lines  of  his  first  chapter  on  The  Tongue,  in  the 
Animal  Kingdom,  Swedenborg  strikes  the  key-note 
of  the  true  analysis  thus  : — 

''  The  use  or  eflfect  which  produces  the  end  must 
be  the  first  object  of  analytical  enquiry.  The  nature 
of  a  member  or  organ  is  known  from  the  use.  The 
use  determines  what  the  organ  is  in  itself,  or  in  its 
own  form  ;  what  it  is  in  series  with  otl/er  organs 
which  are  contiguous  to  it,  or  surround  it,  and  which 
continuously  precede  and  continuously  follow  it ;  and 
what  it  is  in  order  with  the  organs  which  are  above 
and  below,  or  prior  and  posterior  to  it.  All  these, 
and  their  uses,  indicate  the  nature  of  the  organ  under 
investigation.  The  use  and  end  are  the  first  things 
that  manifest  themselves  ;  for  the  end  is  in  a  manner 
all  in  all  in  every  stage  of  the  progress,  from  first  to 
last— the  very  soul  of  the  thing.  Thus  all  things 
that  belong  to  the  body,  and  that  act  as  parts  of  the 
body,  vividly  represent  and  manifest  the  soul." 
{Animal  Kingdom,  vol.  i.  pp.  33,  34.) 

You  must  know  the  end  or  use,  and  work  from 


86  SCIENTIFICS, 

that ;  or  else  metaphysically  work  in  the  dark,  and 
pile  up  facts  which  may,  with  a  good  purpose,  be  a 
good  thing  for  a  future  time.     The  ends  or  uses  of 
the  tongue  are  manifold  ;  as  these  are  revealed  to 
you,  and  as  the  structure  is  known,  you  have  the 
soul   and   body  of  the  organ.      So  your  Ufe  as  a 
physiologist  is  strictly  limited  by  your  discernment 
of  the  ends  carried  out  in  the  structure.     And  analy- 
sis is  but  the  path  which  shows  in  clear  detail  the 
synthetic    ends    in   the   tongue.      These    ends   are 
what   make    it,    as   architects   make   houses;    and 
analvsis  is  the  pupil  mason  who  must  be  commanded 
by  them,  or  be  a  foolish  artisan.     The  higher  the 
ends,  the  better  the  analysis.     In  other  words,  God 
and  the  soul  are  the   masters  of  physiology,  and 
analytic  science  working  honestly  for  knowledge  of 
God's   purposes,    is    their   everlasting   subordinate, 
blessed  in  his  proper  place.     But  an  analytic  science 
which  does  not  look  for  plain  ends  when  they  can  be 
had,  or  which  despises  them,  is  a  busy  and  danger- 
ous fool.       Now   the  plain  end  of  all  is,  that  the 
whole  body  is  the  organ  of  its  immortal  soul,  and 
that  the  soul,  mind,  and  spirit  in  the  body,  are  in 
their  end  and  use  when  they  stand  in  the  order  of 
the  Lord  for  His  service.     Fence  it  about  as  we  may, 
the  discernment  of  this  end,  and  the  religious  appli- 
cation of  it,  and  the  gift  to  see  how  it  is  carried 
forth  in  potency  in  the  life  of  every  organ  and  of  the 
whole,  is  the  only  recovery  from  death   and  ruin 
possible  in  the  analytical  physiological  sciences. 

If  you  think  this  cannot  be  done,  you  are  referred 
to  Swedenborgs  Animal  Kingdom,  where  it  is  done 
for  the  organs  of  the  human  body:  it  is  there 
accomplished  ''  anatomically,  physically,  and  philo- 
sophically," by  demonstrating  the  correspondence  of 


SCIENTIFICS. 


87 


the  organs  with  the  soul,  that  is,  with  the  man  ;  and 
with  society,  that  is,  with  the  greater  man  ;  and  the 
proximate  animation  of  the  body  by  that'  correspon- 
dence. The  latter  problem,  inscrutable  for  other 
pliysiology,  receives  a  complete  and  ever-completing 
solution,  as  the  human  mind  perceptive  of  ends,  and 
observation  studying  their  instruments,  bring  the 
two  together  in  the  use  of  life. 

There  are  tests  by  which  a  scientist,  examining 
himself  in  the  sight  of  God,  may  ascertain  what  his 
end  and  object  are  in  pursuing  his  self-imposed 
vocation.  And  a  plain  one  suggests  itself  here.  If 
his  means  are  atrociously  cruel,  if  he  is  in  the  '^  Sodom 
and  Egypt "  of  animal  violation,  he  may  be  scientifi- 
cally sure  that  his  end  is  self  and  its  gratification, 
and  that  it  is  earthly,  sensual,  and  devilish. 

Analytics  witlioid  uses  close  the  sciences,  ctnd  violent 
analytics  close  them  violently,  and  seal  them, — By 
closing  them  is  here  meant,  that  they  are  closed 
against  ends  and  all  the  higher  reasons,  closed 
against  all  imagination  of  good  and  truth  as  reigning 
at  the  top  and  in  tlie  centre  of  things,  closed  against 
the  secret  way  and  the  open  way  that  leads  to  God, 
from  whom  all  things  come.  Thus  they  are  closed 
against  His  influx,  which  organically  is  genius,  and 
by  a  better  gift,  inspiration.  After  this  a  right 
understanding  has  no  hold  on  scientifics,  and  they 
never  reach  the  portals  of  the  rational  mind  :  they 
are  surds  making  surds  to  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

Now  this  closure,  and  the  contrary  openness,  are 
worth  attending  to.  The  closed  analysis  is  all  flesh, 
with  no  channels,  or  tubes,  or  permeabilities  in  it 
but  those  of  the  lowest  order.  ''  Goods  trains,"  of 
flesh  and  other  food,  of  air,  and  the  like,  run  through 
the  carnal  subject  from  the  world,  to  the  world,  and 


as 


SCIENTIFICS. 


SCIENTIFICS, 


89 


create  its  faculties,  and  are  its  causes.  Bowels  are 
its  be  all  and  end  all,  as  in  some  low  animal  forms. 
The  circulation  of  its  blood  is  self-contained,  a  river 
of  self ;  the  body  itself  is  the  carnal  microcosm  in 
which  it  expatiates.  In  short,  the  man  is  conglu- 
tinated  aggressive  flesh,  corresponding  to  violational 
physiology.  Protoplasm  and  cells  differently  ap- 
posed, and  developed  into  impervious  lines,  are  the 
account  of  the  solid  creature.  This  has  no  founda- 
tion in  fact,  but  is  the  imagination  of  the  carnal 
mind,  itself  equally  solid  with  its  conception  ;  it  is 
mere  imaorination,  because  the  ultimate  structure  of 
nerve  and  vessel  is  beyond  microscopes,  and  the 
solidity  is  not  a  fact  but  an  inference  from  liking. 
It,  however,  concedes  the  right  to  other  imagination 
— to  an  imasrination  based  on  the  fact  of  Influx. 
Now  thought,  feeling,  love,  all  states  of  consciousness, 
have  their  channels;  they  are  not  permanent,  but  flow 
on  occasion  ;  in  other  words,  they  inflow,  or  come 
by  influx.  They  come  by  influx  from  the  source  of 
life,  which  is  God.  This  theory  with  its  imaginations 
is  justified,  like  any  scientific  theory,  by  fitting  the 
facts.  The  steps  of  its  appreciation,  like  the  solid 
cell-germ  view,  are  hypotheses,  imaginations  if  you 
please.  Good  science  is  full  of  these,  and  the  fuller 
the  better  w-hen  the  rational  mind  controls  them  ; 
they  give  it  active  life,  and  work  for  it  as  its  artisans. 
Swedenborgs  first  hypothesis  of  these  things,  and 
we  are  obliged  to  cite  him,  for  he  is  the  only  human 
physiologist  extant,  lay  in  the  doctrine  of  the  nerves 
as  channels  of  the  animal  spirits  :  the  animal  spirits 
being  cosmic  human  forms  which,  with  their  proper 
brain  substances,  are  accommodated  hy  their  forms  2it 
once  to  the  beginning  of  motion  and  to  the  reception 
of  life.  He  regarded  the  nerves  as  in  some  sense 
their  tubes,  carrying  their  capacity  for  life,  wisdom, 


and  work  throughout  the  frame.  Thus  regarding 
them,  he  kept  the  human  frame  open  at  the  top  for 
the  influx  of  creative  life  ;  and  in  doing  this,  whether 
his  formula  was  final  or  not,  he  let  a  pure  river  of 
life  water  physiology.  No  matter  whether  the  influx 
and  its  tubing  are  like  blood  and  arteries,  or  like  air 
and  ether  and  their  rills  and  rivers  of  light  and 
electricity,  he  here  struck  upon  Correspondence ; 
and  the  formula,  with  no  dogmatism,  is, — as  the 
blood  is  to  the  heart  and  arteries,  so  is  the  animal 
spirit  to  the  brain  and  the  nerve  channels.  So  long 
as  this  is  steadily  kept  in  view,  above  all  study  and  mi- 
croscopy, so  long  the  body  is  open  to  life  ;  the  moment 
the  reverse  of  it  is  fixed,  that  moment  the  higher 
reasons  of  the  body  die,  and  its  physiology  is  a  carcase. 
The  vessels  of  Life, — Against  this  ancient  per- 
ceptive doctrine  of  the  ^^  animal  spirit,"  that  is  to 
say,  of  an  orderly  influx  into,  and  transflux  through, 
the  human  body,  from  the  highest  organs,  or  the 
cortices  and  marrows  of  the  brain,  downwards,  the 
sensual  mind  pleads  microscopic  reasons,  such  as  the 
cellular  and  concamerated,  not  tubular  structure  of 
the  nerves,  as  revealed  by  observation.  This  how- 
ever makes  the  senses  the  last  court  of  appeal  about 
the  mind's  instrumentation  ;  which  is  absurd.  It 
may  be  stated  broadly,  that  to  any  higher  set  of 
powers,  all  the  lower  forms  are  tubular ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  higher  can  penetrate  and  pervade  them  in 
orderly  paths,  and  in  the  organic  body,  in  paths  pre- 
appointed. And  also  this  further,  that  the  way  of 
the  hiorher  throuofh  the  lower  can  never  be  found  out 
from  the  lower ;  though  when  it  is  once  admitted,  it 
may  be  discerned  mentally,  not  sensually,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  higher.  The  lower  always 
seems  blocked  by  its  very  structure,  by  its  resistent 


90 


SCIENTIFICS. 


inferiority,  when  looked  at  from  beneath,  and  the 
clearest  evidence  can  be  given  that  it  is  impermeable  ; 
besides  that  "  impossibility  "  and  its  endless  gabble 
enter  the  sensual  field.  Yet  it  is  clear  that  the 
nervous  fibres,  seemingly  solid,  or  compacted  of 
walled  cells  and  cellules,  and  exhibiting  no  pathways, 
may,  and  if  there  be  real  influx  and  transflux  of  life 
must,  be  channels  and  conduits  of  a  human  stream 
represented  in  nature  by  a  receptive  vibratile  spirit ; 
a  human  etlier  if  you  please.  Where  the  senses  show 
no  doors,  but  only  walls,  this  can  ''  come  in,"  and 
traverse  its  own  vessels,  visible  as  certainties  to  only 
the  instructed  rational  mind  ;  and  indispensable  as 
objects  for  that  mind  in  its  relation  to  physiology. 

And  further  it  is  clear,  that  if  you  are  to  reason 
from  anatomy  and  physiology  at  all,  which  no  one 
need  do  unless  he  pleases,  the  thought  that  connects 
the  visible  brain  with  the  whole  mind,  is  a  rational 
servant  of  the  upper  thought  that  the  animal  spirit 
has  the  mental  attributes  in  a  superior  and  supreme 
degree,  and  exercises,  not  a  ''  cerebration,"  which  is 
a  general  or  communal  function,  but  an  intuition 
from  God,  which  is  a  universal  or  statesman  function, 
of  which  we  are  not  conscious ;  and  which  exists  in 
degrees ;  and  is  only  revealed  to  us  in  part  as  our 
minds  become  voluntarily  opened  parallel  to  the 
high  tiers  of  this  exalted  spiritual  and  cosmical  in- 
telligence above  us  and  within  us.  This  animal 
spirit,  or,  to  borrow  an  old  English  word,  this 
''  soulish  "  spirit,  for  there  is  nothing  animal  about  it 
in  the  ordinary  sense,  gives  us  the  right  to  think 
analogically  of  every  function  of  the  body,  and  to  re- 
present it  as  of  human  quality  and  proportion  ;  to 
know  that  the  functions  are  quasi  mental  works, 
or  struggles,  parallel  with  our  own  consciousness; 


SCIENTIFICS. 


91 


and  especially  with  conscience,  as  determining  the 
ultimate  character  of  our  lives  ;  which  lives  through- 
out are  organic  forms. 

The  rank  of  Analytics,— QoT\i\x^\on  reigns  with 
regard  to  the  importance  to  be  attributed  to  the 
abstract  or  unapplied  sciences,  and  to  their  proper 
order  in  the  services  of  the  mind.  For  in  large  part 
at  the  present  day  they  are  frivolous,  and  the  off- 
sprincr  of  the  love  of  novelty,  amusement,  and  dis- 
tinction. This  is  perceived  by  the  public  ;  and  the 
scientists  in  question,  beggars  in  regard  to  solid 
property  of  use,  claim  kindred,  nay,  main  sharehold- 
ing, with  the  applied  sciences,  more  properly  speak- 
ino",  with  the  Arts  which  minister  winged  sandals  to 
the  feet  of  human  life.  The  title  is  not  valid  ;  and 
so  far  as  evil  and  false  analytics  blur  the  great  light 
of  true  knowledge,  their  influence  on  human  power  is 
to  discouragement  and  paralysis.  For  knowledge  is 
not  power,  but  weakness,  nay,  ruin,  when  the  thing 
known  had  better  be  unknown.  The  place  of  bad 
analytics  of  this  kind,  such  as  vivisection  gathers,  is 
the  place  of  rejection  ;  socially  at  last,  the  cell  of  the 
prison.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  large 
assemblage  of  analytical  knowledges  which  is  at 
least  neutral ;  botanical,  zoological,  and  other  facts, 
which,  if  observers  are  justified  by  their  daily  duties 
in  attending  to,  they  may  fairly  plead,  may  be 
useful,  and  in  the  meantime  are  harmless,  and  as 
objects,  curious  and  beautiful.  The  question  then  is, 
what  is  the  place  and  rank  of  the  pursuit  and  attain- 
ment of  such  things  ?  Their  scientists  claim  for  it, 
and  the  systems  in  which  it  is  enshrined,  a  very  high 
place.  What  is  the  limit  and  precedence  of  the  great 
collectors  and  dilettanti  of  the  day? 

It  is  obvious  that  mere  facts,  and  the  digest  of 


92 


SCIENTIFICS, 


SCIENTIFICS. 


93 


'I 


mere  facts,  belong  in  themselves  only  to  the  senses 
and  the  memory,  and  that  their  importance  consists  in 
the  rational  mind  laying  hold  of  them,  and  convert- 
inor  them  from  dead  scientifics  into  truths.  Failing 
this,  they  still  have  a  value,  because,  so  far  as  they 
are  correct,  they  are  convertible  when  an  adequate 
mind  receives  them.  But  excepting  where  they 
touch  use,  and  suggest  work  and  practice,  they  are 
the  lowest  stratum  of  human  acquirements.  Bare 
knowing  without  doings  remains  in  the  senses,  but 
does  not  enter  the  mind.  It  is  justified  in  the 
sciences,  because  many  good  men  are  born  with  an 
honest  love  of  acquiring  such  knowledges.  But 
next  to  the  objects  of  the  five  senses,  its  place  is  at 
the  bottom  of  faculties.  We  speak  not  now  of 
acquired  knowledges  animated  by  ulterior  designs ; 
such  as  the  serving  of  God  intellectually,  or  the 
denial  of  Him ;  but  of  the  place  of  mere  science  ; 
Avhat  Bacon  calls  its  ''dry  light."  And  this  is 
adjudged  to  be  not  a  foundation,  which  applied  Art 
and  its  science  are,  but  a  limbus  of  an  inferior  order. 
The  more  of  such  knowledge  there  is,  the  more 
the  memory  is  cultivated  at  the  expense  of  the  mind. 
And  as  the  possession  of  it  is  huge  materially,  the 
acreage,  yea,  the  wiseacreage  immense,  it  gives  the 
sense  of  lordly  proprietorship,  and  puffs  up  the 
impleted  scientist  beyond  his  fellows.  Knowledge  is 
property  at  any  rate ;  there  is  no  denying  that. 
But  conceit  of  privilege,  and  lordism,  is  its  present 
bane  ;  so  that  the  typical  conceited  men  among  men 
are  these  scientists ;  and  they  walk  among  the  rest 
in  big  cloaks  of  terminology,  stopping  the  streets  of 
nature  with  persons.  Such  scientists,  so  mainly 
icrnorant  of  man,  are  at  best  in  the  stratum  next 
above  the  senses.  The  place  of  the  atheistic 
ientists  is  far  beneath   this,  and   is  a  region  of 


arrogance  more  fiery  than  conceit,  and  deeper  down 
than  ignorance. 

In  fine,  the  place  of  the  natural  sciences,  and  in- 
deed of  all  scientifics,  is  in  the  external  mind ;  and 
does  not  belong  to  the  opening  of  man  s  internal  life. 
And  hence,  in  spite  of  the  exactitude  of  this  great 
field  of  memory,  intellect  and  rationality  cannot  be 
predicated  of  it ;  for  it  stands  beneath  the  problems 
of  good  and  evil ;  and  though  it  may  enter  into 
wisdom,  there  is  no  wisdom  in  its  own  walk.  The 
truths  of  the  conduct  of  life,  the  knowledoes  which 
accompany  the  heart  and  mind  and  conscience,  in 
short,  the  way  of  a  good  man's  life,  most  exacting, 
but  with  none  of  the  exactitude  of  definition  or  foot- 
rule,  are  of  kingly  certainty  compared  to  scientific 
facts,  and  theories  however  universal  of  matter, 
space,  and  time.  The  man,  in  his  existence,  is  made 
up  of  awful  certainties  for  himself,  compared  to 
Avhich  scientifics,  even  those  of  the  widest  range, 
and  commanded  by  theories  however  perfect,  are 
but  chauQfeful  shadows. 

Certainty  and  exactitude. — We  may  here  con- 
clude that  exactitude,  the  aim  of  science,  is  one 
thing,  and  certainty  another ;  for  exactitude  may 
attach  to  any  falsities  if  their  artifice  is  but  carefully 
worked  out  and  defined.  You  may  make  exactly  what 
you  want,  and  call  that  exactitude.  But  certainty 
comes  from  above,  and  is  the  constantly  increasin^^ 
appanage  and  fortune  of  the  truths  and  goods  of  life. 
Hence  again  the  living  church  and  the  living  state, 
in  their  daily  experiences  and  knowledges,  that  is  to 
say,  divinely  instructed  common  sense,  and  the  tiers 
of  wisdom  and  intelligence  natural  and  spiritual 
which  correspond  to  it,  and  are  built  upon  its 
exercise,  are  immeasurably  above  the  field,  and  beyond 
the  permanence,  of  science,  its  plane,  and  its  laws. 


94 


CONSUMMATIO  S^CULL 


XXIV. 


CONSUMMATIO    S^CULI. 


/ 


The  consummation  of  the  Age  in  Scientijics. — The 
reader  may  wonder  that  we  have  spoken  at  such 
great  length  of  the  violation  of  life  by  scientists  as  a 
norm  of  procedure ;  but  besides  that  the  facts  are 
appaUing,  they  belong  to  a  series  of  crimes  which 
are  '' intev  Christianos  non  nominanda,''  and  which 
are  already  statutable  offences  in  part.  Being  such, 
any  instance  of  these  deeds  proclaimed  as  a  rule  of 
action,  leads  to  all  the  rest,  and  calls  upon  the 
country  for  judgment,  and  condemnation  by  law. 
We  do  not  argue  that  because  a  murder  is  of  some 
poor  outcast  person,  it  escapes  from  value  in  the 
eyes  of  justice;  on  the  contrary,  the  nation  is 
stricken  by  it,  and  justice  mounts  its  throne  to 
assign  it  to  doom.  The  whole  people  is  hushed  to 
listen  to  the  sentence.  This  is  because  the  crime  is 
of  universal  import,  and  if  it  could  be  disregarded, 
it  would  breed  murders  as  the  shambles  breed  flies  ; 
it  would  actively  infest  mankind ;  as  perhaps  we 
may  have  opportunity  of  showing  in  speaking  of  the 
doctrine  of  infestations.  The  nature  of  society, 
which  is  one  body,  assures  this  result.  Science  too, 
being  in  society,  is  one  body,  and  whatever  crime  is 
practised  and  then  condoned  by  it,  is  made  into 
one  of  its  laws  and  measurements,  infests  it,  and 
accomplishes  its  consummation,  and  its  doom. 

Now  the  violation  of  life  to  get  at  the  knowledges 
of  life,  is  the  last  debauchery  of  science,  and  its  final 
crime  in  one  direction.     The  mind  of  man  can  con- 


CONSUMMATIO  S^CULL 


95 


ceive  nothing  more  final.  The  pruriency  of  the  most 
cruel  lusts  uses  all  its  fingers  here.  The  delights  of 
hell  are  bodily  in  it.  We  are  entitled  to  say  that 
this  belongs  to  the  consummation  of  the  age  in  the 
scientific  sphere. 

We  must  here  somewhat  anticipate  the  argument 
of  this  book.  Now  we  know  from  the  writings  of 
Swedenborg,  and  afterwards  read  in  the  signs  of  the 
times,  that  such  a  consummation  has  come  upon  the 
first  Christian  Church.  It  has  died,  and  been  re- 
moved out  of  the  Divine  way,  '^  because  it  had  no 
lono"er  any  faith,  because  it  had  no  charity  ;  "  and 
therefore  could  no  longer  guide  mankind.  What 
then  does  this  imply  ? 

It  impUes  that  the  whole  sphere  of  modern  life  is 
under  this  consummation  ;  on  the  evil  side  it  is 
judged,  and  displaced  from  the  institutes  of  the 
Divine  Providence.  We  must  look  out  for  this 
consummation  everywhere ;  not  in  theologies  and 
churches  alone  ;  but  in  law,  in  medicine,  in  govern- 
ment ;  in  money,  facts,  and  figures  ;  in  public  and 
private  affairs,  and  their  combinations.  We  must 
also  look  everywhere  for  the  beginnings  of  the  new 
order ;  for  the  way  of  Him  who  says,  '^  Behold  I 
make  all  thinofs  new."  We  have  found  the  clear 
brand  of  consummation  on  the  forehead  of  science  ; 
it  may  be  found  universally  in  other  fields  if  we  seek 
for  it  in  this  lio^ht. 

The  advent  of  the  new  order,  the  new  aeon, 
specifically,  the  second  coming  of  the  Lord,  is 
effected  already  in  the  spiritual  world  with  plenary 
power  ;  the  day  of  judgment,  and  its  acts,  are  there  : 
men  on  earth  receive  its  influence,  but  without  the 
disturbance  of  their  voluntary  societies,  or  the  in- 
frin^orement  of  their  free  choice  and  following*  of  srood 


h 


06  CONSUMMATIO  S^CULI. 

and  evil.     The  colossal  events  which  that  influence 
has  quickened  seem  to  follow  in  natural  course  in 
the  days  of  men  and  nations.     But  good  and  evil  are 
both   animated   by   new    principles,   and    pmctical 
good  will  have  continual  successes,   and   evil   will 
"  still  have  judgment  here."     The  new  freedom  from 
heaven,  and  the  new  intelligence  which  is  its  outbirth, 
give   tiie   opportunity  for  evil  consummations,  and 
brin^  one  quickened  wickedness  after  another  to  its 
boundary,  its  final  discovery  by  divine  light,  and  its 
iud<^ment.     And  thus  we  have  the  spectacle  at  this 
day"  in  all  departments  where  a  clear  judgment  for 
ri.rhteousness  and  faithfulness  has  not  been  volun- 
tarily pronounced  by  the  people,  of  more  towering 
forms  of  evil.     This  is  because  the  great  criminals, 
the  ancient  evils  of  the  race,  must  show  themselves 
until  they  arrive  by  their  own  waywardness  and 
blindness  before   the   very  bench  of  the  assize  of 
the  Divine  Man.     Tliere  are  numbers  of  them,  m- 
dividuals,  professions,   combinations,  policies,  ship- 
ownincrs  and  landownings,  arts,  sciences,  philosophies, 
churches,  advancing  through  evil  after  evil  to  ima- 
ginary estates,   or  thrones,  and  all  on  the  road  to 
their  own  specific  judgment  in  the  consummation  o 
the  acre.     But  for  any  of  them  this  may  be  averted 
by   individual   and   national   repentance,   and   true 
reformation  ;  and  in  that  case  they  quit  the  lines  ot 
divine  judgment,  and  enter  upon  voluntary  regenera- 
tion, which  is  the  path  commanded  by  the  Lord  lor 

the  new  age.  . 

Marls   of  Consunmation.— Science  itselt,   m  us 

general   aspects,   shows   on   its   forehead   the  clear 

mark   of  the   consummation   of    the    age   in    two 

directions.     The  ambition  towards  universal  know- 

led<re,  and  the  dominion  of  the  same  ;  and  contempt 


CONSUMMATIO  SyECULI. 


97 


of  use  ;  for  the  Lord's  own  kingdom  of  science  is  a 
kingdom  of  uses.  And  2.  The  desertion  of  the 
proper  ends  of  knowing,  to  introduce  covertly  the 
end  of  mortifying  religion  ;  this  object  being  deeply 
planted  in,  and  often  openly  avowed  by,  the  scientific 
mind.  By  the  first  of  these  destructions  the  old 
science  ceases  to  be  human  in  a  good  sense  ;  and  by 
the  second  it  becomes  diabolical  in  its  aim.  By  the 
first  it  loses  its  body  and  mind,  and  by  the  second 
its  soul.  In  other  words,  it  impinges  by  both  of  its 
great  faculties  against  that  fence  beyond  which 
there  is  no  passage,  but  wliere  arrest  and  consumma- 
tion come,  Tliis  may  happen  while  scientific  pursuit 
is  in  full  cry,  and  its  prey  great ;  it  may  be  un- 
suspected by  reason  of  the  multitude  of  followers, 
the  width  of  the  field,  and  the  multiplication  of 
wealth  ;  and  yet  the  whole  dominion  as  a  centre 
may  be  already  displaced,  and  its  candlestick  re- 
moved ;  and  the  open  desolation  of  it  be  preparing 
by  the  doom  of  God  and  the  instrumental  indigna- 
tion of  mankind.  The  removal  of  influx  from  the 
condemned  sciences,  their  lowering  to  the  lowest 
grounds,  their  loss  of  modesty  and  decency,  their 
resort  to  cruelty,  the  defect  of  genius  for  prosecuting 
them  on  their  own  merits,  and  the  presence  of  evil 
genius  for  atheizing  them  ;  these  are  signs  written 
up  for  those  who  can  read  them,  and  they  mark 
consummation.  A  new  science  in  and  from  a  new 
church  will  then  take  a  new  place  in  regions  of  the 
mind  far  distant  from  these  desolations. 

Protoplasm  and  developyiieiit  ex  se. — Among  the 
signs  of  scientific  consummation  we  note  the  dogma 
of  developments  in  nature  postulated  and  worked 
apart  from  a  Divine  Author  of  being  ;  the  be- 
gmning  of  such  developments  in  protoplasm  ;    and 


G 


I 


98  CONSUMMATIO  S^CULI. 

their  end  everywhere  for   the   mind   in  'Hhe   un- 
known."     Now  the  protoplasm  of  modern  thought 
is  the  doctrine  of  a  primordial  matter  or  stuff  from 
which  all  organizations  take  their  origin,  and  which 
reaches  in  its  upward  course  from  organific  cells  by 
developments  of   shapes  through  animals  to  man- 
kind, being  therefore  a  prse-seminal  continent  of  the 
forces  of  life.    In  fact,  it  is  Nature  itself  regarded  as 
a  lake  of  seed.     We  do  not  speak  here  of  any  sub- 
stance that  is  not  doctrinated,    but   occurs   in   the 
field  of  microscopic  or  other  observation,  and  carries 
with  it  no  insurgent  mental  consequences.       Such 
substance,  if  visible,  is  of  course  valid,  and  has  its 
own  scientific  worth.     But  protoplasm  so  called,  and 
entered  by  the  doctrines  which  now  inspire  it,  is  of 
a  different  import.    Out  of  otherwise  harmless  serum 
it   makes   an   imaginary   cauldron    of  life   working 
towards  organism,  and  producing  nature  after  nature 
in  its  own  way ;  the  clay  mind  moving  and  moulding 
the  clay,  and  sceptic  of  the  potter  as  a  matter  of 
ease   to  itself,  ex  professo,    but  in  reality  actively 
shunting  the  potter,  and  bidding  him  wait  for  ever. 
This  is'' the  fancy  of  a  most   bachelor    Self.      No 
childhood  but  dribbling  senility  of  science,  it  leaves 
out,   as    unworthy   of    notice,    the    fact   that   men 
and  women  make  men  and  women,  and  that  the 
lake  of  primordials  inside  any  conceivable  organism  is 
made  in  an  analogous  way  ;  that  every  drop  of  plant 
juice  presupposes  the  plant,  and  every  atom  of  mans 
serum  contains  the  man.     Protoplasm  has  indeed  no 
real  seed  in  its  loins,  but  only  pruritus  atheizandu 
It  is  impotence  in  a  mirror,  a  doctrine  antagonist  to 
generation.     And  the  scepticism  inside  it  is  perfect 
fear  casting  out  love  and  foreclosing  its  acts.     It  is 
needless  to  say  how  pedantic  it  is,  and  how  ridicu- 


CONSUMMATIO  S^ECULL 


99 


lous  in  a  world  of  uses.  Its  importance  however 
lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  part  of  a  deliberate  method 
of  leaving  out  all  the  truly  human  faculties  in  the 
study  of  living  nature,  and  supplanting  their  place 
by  sensual  thought  alone.  This  makes  this,  and  this 
makes  this,  is  the  word  of  its  biological  laboratory, 
and  as  it  begins  at  the  extreme  opposite  to  person, 
the  end  is  that  nature  makes  nature.  But  man, 
who  is,  if  he  will,  a  recipient  of  love  and  wisdom 
and  intelligence  from  the  Almighty,  may  leave  out 
nature  thus,  but  cannot  so  make  nature.  Whatever 
he  does  with  his  powers  and  parts,  among  which  his 
exploring  senses  are  the  lowest  conscious  ones,  he 
does  from  plans,  purposes,  ideas  ;  and  whatever  pri- 
mordial stuff  he  handles  becomes  the  vehicle,  and 
ultimately  the  form  of  these.  It  is  then  impossible 
to  him,  without  violating  his  own  mind,  and  using 
only  a  small  fraction  of  the  remnant,  to  investigate 
nature  otherwise  than  as  the  carrier  of  the  ends  of 
the  Creator  ;  otherwise  than  in  the  whole  forms  of 
things  working  out  their  predetermined  uses.  And 
not  primordial  stuff  traced  from  below  upwards,  but 
men  and  women,  and  all  their  correspondences  in 
forms  and  uses  from  above  downwards,  are  the 
theatre  in  which  ends  and  purposes  live,  and  from 
which  they  issue.  Moreover,  without  a  Word  of 
Ood,  God's  ends  and  purposes  cannot  be  known. 
And  hence  to  the  descending  series  of  thought  inter- 
preting nature,  that  Word  pressant  above  is  a 
''  rational  necessity."  In  other  words,  science,  in  all 
its  perceptions  and  defences,  cannot  ascend  from 
protoplasm,  but  must  descend  from  the  Word  of  the 
Lord. 

In  concluding  these  hints  on  protoplasmism,   or 
the  dogma  of  ponds  of   life  from  which  organisms 


T 


lOO 


CONSUMMATIO  S^CULL 


MODERN  THO  UGHT, 


lOI 


S 


issue,  emptied  of  the  belief  in  a  Creator  having  pur- 
poses, it  may  be  noted  that  the  method  of  thought 
involved   is  the   professor's    path  of  stupidity  and 
obscurantism.      It  aims    to    know   nothing  of   the 
protoplasm  but  its  struggles  and  successes  ;  its  lines 
ultimating  now  in  a  race  of  men,  now  in  a  race  of 
frogs  ;  and  as  creative  purpose  is  voided  from  the 
struggling  abyss,  it  is  essentially  unknown  and  un- 
knowable   save    as  a  transit;    and  what  will  the 
thing  do  next   is  the  only  question.      But  where 
there  are  no  ends  nothing  is  attainable,  and  what- 
ever the  fall  of  chances,  nothing  effectual  is  realized 
or  done.     And  this  beginning  from  the  unknown 
and    unknowable,  from  active  cells  that  exist  for 
nothing,  implying  an  ardent  love  of  ignorance  of  God 
and  ends,  pursues  the  subject  to  its  goal,   where  all 
life,  in  death,  closes  again  in  a  strongly  voluntary 
unknown.     Proceeding  from  such  a  beginning  as  a 
primum  falsum,  men  and  manners  and  societies,  and 
moral  life  and  affairs,  are  still  but  the  rolling  pro- 
toplasm, over  turning  by  self-evolution  into  some- 
thing  else   fundamentally   unknown  ;    no   foothold 
gained,  and  death  at  every  step  triumphant    over 
science  as  well  as  over  mankind.      Scientific  proto- 
plasm thus  disembogues  and  loses  itself  into  philoso- 
phical protoplasm,  and  the  cataract  of  nature  and  mind 
is  dissipated  into  the  frivolous  unknown.     A  word 
the  opposite  of  education  is  required  to  signify  the 
public  effect ;  obfuscation  is  not  enough,  for  it  is  a 
honeyed  voluntary  diabetes  which  drains  spiritual 
manhood  away. 


XXV. 


MODERN  THOUGHT. 


Modern  thought  is  a  sly  justification  often  pleaded 
for  opinions  and  practices  that  otherwise  want  a  char- 
acter. It  generally  clinches  some  attack  upon  ancient 
thought,  so  far  as  the  latter  embraces  religious  faith, 
or  acceptance  of  the  ends  of  a  Divine  Providence 
ruling  in  nature  or  society.  In  this  sense,  it  is 
*' modern  thought"  that  science  shall  study  nature 
apart  from  belief  in  a  Divinity.  Also  that  all  Scrip- 
ture is  externally  made  up  of  words  whose  final  sense 
is  to  be  unlocked  by  criticism.  Also  that  knowledge 
is  the  power  of  powers,  and  that  all  means  to  it  are 
justifiable.  Also  that  society  is  a  human  invention 
continually  perfecting — not  growing  better,  for  good 
and  evil  have  no  standard  with  which  to  measure 
themselves  in  this  thought.  Also  that  circumstances 
evolve  everything,  and  are  the  only  objects  of  study. 
And  that  society  can  be  held  together  by  science  and 
talent,  and  dispense  with  the  old  guides,  religion  and 
its  wisdom,  and  under  them,  love  and  its  wisdom, 
when  the  selfhood  becomes  sufficiently  enlightened 
to  be  unselfish  for  the  sake  of  supreme  selfishness. 
Also  that  observant  expediency  is  the  easiest  wheel 
of  movement,  and  that  long  sharpsighted  expediency 
grows  to  be  wisdom.  These  are  some  factors  of 
'^  modern  thought."  And  as  they  require  a  brazen 
statement,  modern  thought  wears  a  long  face,  a  calm 
manner,  a  flippant  logic,  and  an  appearance  of  unin- 
terested apathy,  and  of  languid  power  of  holding 
its  own  and  waiting  for  more  modern  thought.  It 
seems  to  care  for  nothing,  in  order  that  it  may  not 


"n 


I 


I02 


t< 


MODERN  THOUGHT. 


open  the  Eastern  question,"  and  rouse  the  antago- 
nism of  powers  that  have  deep  cares  and  aims  which 
modern  thought  ignores. 

But  this  claim,  modern  thought,  as  often  used,  is 
a  forgery,  and  therein  a  small  but  active  band  of 
doubters  and  deniers  usurp  the  great  seal  and  signa- 
ture of  the  age  for  the  purpose  of  their  ways.     The 
spirit  of  the  age,  in  its  good,  in  its  breadth,  in  its  prac- 
tical arts  and  sciences  and  their  punctuality  to  use ;  in 
its  devotion  to  the  end  of  raising  the  people  into  de- 
cency first,  and  into  thrift,  duty,  love,  and  religion,  and 
so  into  education  and  useful  knowledge, — that  spirit  is 
earnest,  emphatic,  inevitably  biblical,  and  has  nothing 
to  do  with  knowledge  as  an  end  for  manliness,  but 
as  a  means  to  godliness.     This  spirit  is  the  ruling, 
the  unappreciated  principle  of  modern  thought.     It 
never  existed  as  a  rational  religious  principle  until 
these  times,  when  a  doctrine  of  use  derived  from 
heaven  has  made  clear  to  man  that  the  only  justifi- 
cation of  any  system  or  pressure  of  thought,  of  any 
popular  mode  of  wishing  and  thinking,  is  its  justifi- 
cation on  the  altar  of  service  of  God  and  service  to 
man.     Will  the  thought  call  down  fire  when  it  is 
placed  there  ?     The  other  ''  modern  thought"  is  the 
sphere  of  decay  from  philosophies  and   scientisms 
since  the  beginning,  the  rags  and  ruins  of  Greek  spe- 
culation and  analytics,  to  which  the  Gospel  is  fool- 
ishness ;  modern  in  nothing  but  its  usurpation  of  the 
new  cloth  of  the  age,  and  in  the  extent  of  its  publi- 
cation.    Wherever  its  term  occurs  it  is  suspect ;  and 
it  should  be  straightway  tried  by  the  test  of  faith  in 
the  Lord  as  the  highest  good,   and  its  forgery  of 
newness,  or   its   newness,  may   be  judged  accord- 
ingly. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  AGE.  103 


XXVI. 

THE    SPIRIT    OF   THE   AGE. 

The  spirit  of  the  age  has  been  mentioned,  and  it  is 
important  to  understand  wherein  it  lies,  and  what  it 
is.  The  spirit  of  a  man  in  the  pervasive  sense  is  the 
general  efflux  from  his  life  and  character,  and  his 
peculiar  influence  upon  men  and  things  around  him. 
It  is  his  qualitative  place  and  share  in  the  sphere  of 
his  operations,  be  that  sphere  large  or  small.  And 
so  the  spirit  of  an  age  is  not  its  mind  or  conscious 
development,  but  the  sphere  which  proceeds  from  it, 
and  is  its  general  circumambient  life.  This  spirit  no 
man  makes,  though  every  man  is  an  influence  in  it. 
It  depends  in  its  turn  on  the  internal  world  in  which 
all  men  are  constituted.  The  spirit  of  the  age 
traced  higher  up  is  the  general  pressure  of  the 
spiritual  world  upon  the  human  race  on  earth  ;  in  the 
present  case  the  incalculable  pressure  of  a  new 
righteousness  of  life,  in  a  new  church  above,  on  con- 
sciences, public  and  private.  No  single  generation 
could  appreciate  this,  because  it  comes  from  the 
plenitude  of  purpose  in  all  human  races  since  the 
beginning,  and  is  continually  poured  through  them 
as  His  organ  by  the  Lord.  This  spirit  can  never  more 
be  extinguished,  because  the  Word  which  is  its 
fountain  is  unsealed,  and  its  wellsprings  open  into 
the  rational  mind.  And  hence,  an  illuminated  reason 
is  become  the  inward  spirit  of  this  age,  fortunate 
with  a  divine  fortune.  Reason,  human  rationality, 
is  therefore  profoundly  justified  in  its  true  workings; 
and  there  is  pure  certainty,  as  it  is  God's  organ  now, 
that  it  will  be  helped  to  discover  and  comprehend 


I04 


GOOD  AND  EVIL  RULE 


everything  that  is  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good 
of  man's  estate ;  and  also  that  it  will,  by  internal 
dictate  and  outward  experience,  be  warned  away 
from  all  fruitless  fields,  and  from  every  breach  of 
use  of  life.  Openness  therefore  to  the  Spirit  of  God, 
and  to  tlie  spiritual  world,  always  for  use'  sake,  is 
also  the  inner  spirit  of  the  age;  and  nothing  can 
enter  into  it  that  questions  for  a  moment  the  higher 
life,  and  its  pulse  in,  and  correspondence  and  con- 
tiguity with,  the  daily  life  of  man  on  earth.  Hence 
also  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  age  to  purify  the  outward 
life,  in  order  that  it  may  be  hard  enough  in  the 
granite  of  the  good  and  the  true  to  sustain  the  piers 
of  the  bridges  of  spiritual  communication  which  are 
being  thrown  across  from  the  other  side,  to  engineer 
death  and  mortality  until  they  can  carry  the  Second 
Cominor  of  Him  Who  is  the  resurrection  and  the 
life.  Truly,  when  we  look  around,  there  seems  to 
be  another  spirit  than  this;  and  yet  there  is  no 
other.  The  breath  of  men  contrary  is  not  a  spirit ; 
and  their  freedom  is  not  a  freedom.  They  have  no 
goal  and  no  aim ;  and  a  spirit  is  all  goal  and  aim ; 
knows  what  it  wants,  and  ''bloweth  where  it  listeth." 
They  are  the  unburied  past ;  the  spirit  of  the  age 
is  the  honest  present  and  the  Holy  City  of  the 
sure  future. 

XXVII. 

GOOD  AND  EVIL  RULE  IN  THE  IMAGINATIONS  OF  SCIENCE. 

The  imagination,  as  a  function  in  science,  is  true, 
or  false,  for  good,  or  for  evil. — This  topic  has  been 
alluded  to  already.  It  shall  be  illustrated  by  the 
present  imaginations  about  astronomy.     A  "  modern 


IN  THE  IMAGINATIONS  OF  SCIENCE.        105 

thought  "  and  intention  here  is  that  suns  and  systems 
are  evolved  by  natural  law  out  of  the  concourse,  or 
streaming  to  centres,  of  atoms  and  bodies,  and  that 
heat,  a  permanent  inhabitant  of  body,  is  evolved  by 
its    own   laws  and   forces;   produces  incandescence 
in  the  suns,  and  indeed  at  certain  stages  in  all  the 
members  of  the  solar  system  ;  which  heat  dies  out 
gradually  in  times,  leaving  planets  a  tempered  period 
in  which,  ''  by  laws,"  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal 
kingdoms  come  out  of  them  upon  them;  after  which 
period  the  planets  cool,  and  universal  death  covers 
their  surfaces.     This  is  the  "  be-all  and  end-all  "  for 
the  sun  also,  which  at  present  is  a  fiery,  ever-bursting 
bubble  in  the  centre  of  the  system.     Here  is  a  dis- 
tinct set  of  imaginations.     It  is  formed  from  the 
lowest  plane  of  thought,  from  physical  heat  as  a 
commander;  and  though  it  notices  the  fact  that  life 
appears  on  our  earth  at  a  certain  stage,  and  may 
therefore  come  up  on  other  planets,  yet  it  ''  runs  " 
bare  heat  as  an  imagination  of  all  that  happens, 
without  putting  life  in  cause,  or  remembering  that  it 
is  a  living  brain  in  which  the  imagination  works.    It 
is  an  imagination  from  self,  and  at  no  point  touches 
upon  a  work  of  God.     Now  this  fact  is  elicited,  that 
any  man  who  believes  in  God  as  the  creator  of  the 
universe,  and  the  end  of  ends,  can  entertain  no  such 
imagination  as  that  which  we  have  sketched.     He 
can  accept  all  the  facts  which  it  marshals;  but  having 
other    faculties    than   the   lowest   opened,    and   an 
imagination  to  each   of  them,  those  faculties  will 
breathe  through  the  subject-matter,  and   give  it  a 
totally   different   form.      By  the   highest   of  those 
faculties,  which  apprehends  the  revealed  Lord,  and 
by  the  revelation  itself,  he  knows  that   nature   is 
dead,  and  of  itself  can  do  nothing,  but  is  actuated 


f 


io6 


THE  IMAGINATIONS  OF  SCIENCE, 


A  NEW  STATE, 


107 


f 


from   within  by   Him   to   all   that  occurs   in  her. 
His  imagination  as  a  factor  works  from  these  points. 
And  quitting  the  level  of  matter  he  too  imagines, 
but  as  a  whole  man  he  imagines,  that  the  suns  are 
themselves  the  primal  natural  fires  lighted  by  the 
Maker  as  the  foundries  of  His  other  works  :   that  as 
He  is  love  itself,  fire  can  exist  from  Him  by  itself  as 
a  substance  and  a  subject.    That  if  all  things  stream 
from  it,  this  is  because  it  is  the  natural  principle  of 
all   things,    and  contains  them   from  the   Lord   in 
potency.     That  therefore  spectrum  analysis  does  not 
import  that  there  are  either  metal,  metal    gas,  or 
other  planetary  substances  in  the  sun,  but  only  their 
fire  correspondents ;  as  it  were  the  spirits,  brains  and 
nerves,  to  which  the  atmospheres  and  substances  of 
earths  are  flesh  and  clothing  on  the  earth.     Here  is 
a  new  set  of  imaginations  adequate  to  all  the  facts, 
and  more  infilling,  higher  and  better  than  the  former. 
They  proceed  from  all  the  faculties  of  the  man,  from 
his  religion,  his  love,  his  intellect ;  and  they  press 
against  the  insurgent  sensual  and  superficial  imagina- 
tions breast  to  breast.     For  any  given  time  they  are 
true  however  poorly  stated,  and  lead  to  good ;  the 
others,    because    brainless    and    heartless,  carnally- 
minded,  and  designedly  negligent  of  the  Lord,  are 
false  however  clearly  put,  and  lead  to  evil. 

Between  these  rival  genera  of  imaginations  ami- 
cable discussion  is  not  possible  ;  each  battles  for  the 
possession  of  the  mind.  Both  are  mental  super- 
additions  to  matter;  the  one  pleading  God  as  a 
supreme  quantity,  the  other  ignoring  God  and  plead- 
ing its  own  probabihties  without  Him.  Each 
imagination  grasps  the  case  according  to  the  faculty 
put  in  force  ;  and  there  is  no  prospect  of  consent  be- 
tween the  opposing  volitions  and  intellectual  facul- 


ties from  which  the  imaginations  live.  Clear  state- 
ment marched  into  the  enemy's  field,  war,  not 
counsel  or  debate,  is  the  manifest  issue.  The  war 
is  a  holy  and  must  not  be  a  timid  work,  for  on  the 
spiritual  side  it  is  a  war  for  the  very  existence  of  the 
human  mind  in  the  domain  of  the  sciences. 


XXVIII. 


A    NEW    STATE. 


The  false  faith  that  any  absolute  and  final  truth 
ca7i  be  discovered  by  science  from  the  changeful  pheno- 
mena of  nature,  is  one  image  and  result  of  its  own 
self-deification.  As  also  is  the  faith  of  science  in  its 
own  permanence.  As  also  again  is  the  postponement 
of  religious  exactitude  called  theology,  until  scieiice 
has  attai7ied  to  its  own  exactitude  complete. — The 
end  and  aim  of  science  is  exact  knowledge  of  the 
data  of  any  subject  submitted  to  it ;  of  anything 
natural,  moral,  social,  or  spiritual,  that  the  faculties 
of  mankind  can  touch  ;  also  of  the  rules  and  laws  of 
things,  which  by  their  application  increase  the 
faculties  of  perceiving  and  knowing.  Tlie  love  of 
the  investigation  for  its  own  sake  is  the  corporeal 
spirit  of  science.  Approximate  and  if  possible  entire 
exactitude  introduced  into  the  subject  in  hand  is  the 
attainment.  Geology,  for  example,  advances  con- 
tinually to  this  attainment  by  the  study  of  the  crust 
of  the  earth.  It  has  reason  to  conclude  that  geo- 
logical time  is  immeasurably  greater  than  historical 
time,  and  that  present  agencies  account  for  a  great 
part  of  the  superficial  phenomena  of  the  earth.  One 
exactitude  is  attained.     But  here  is  the  point.     The 


If' 


1 08 


A  NEW  STATE, 


A  NEW  STATE. 


109 


V 


triumphant  geologist,  not  content  with  this,  must 
needs  pass  from  geological  time  and  astronomical 
space  to  two  quantities  of  his  own  postulation,  not 
of  his  own  creation  or  imagination,  for  he  can  neither 
create  nor  imagine  them, — namely,  to  infinite  space, 
and  infinite  time,  and  endeavour  to  introduce  exacti- 
tude to  cover  his  quantities  there.  Instantaneously 
the  love  of  science  and  its  lawful  possessions  is  in- 
verted, and  converted,  with  its  feet  upwards  and  its 
head  downwards,  into  the  lust  of  science,  sighing 
and  burning  for  the  possession  of  things  that  are  not 
its  own.  Present  history  is  full  of  this.  You  shall 
see  the  accomplished  crystallographer  and  experi- 
mentalist, most  versed  in  delicate  operations  which 
show  the  exquisite  orders  of  matter,  a  very  Linnaeus 
of  what  is  lovely  in  particles,  who  can  handle  heat 
and  light  with  the  fine  heat  and  light  of  his  own 
scientific  genius,  and  give  them  to  the  mind  of  an 
audience  almost  like  firm  statues, — you  shall  see  him 
leave  his  little  palace  of  truth,  and  rushing  out 
before  the  people  on  a  great  occasion,  go  a-hectoring 
against  personal  Godhead,  and  proclaim  himself  an 
archbishop  in  a  new  church  of  matter.  In  short, 
the  lust  of  knowing  everything,  and  on  his  own  terms, 
has  supplanted  his  science,  and  mockingly  gives 
oracles  out  of  its  abandoned  shrine.  So  have  we  seen 
an  aggressive  young  cuckoo  overfilling  a  small  bird's 
nest,  and  the  true  brood  lying  about  dead  on  the 
ground.  If  such  a  man  goes  on  in  this  career  he 
will  in  time  care  nothing  about  science,  and  every- 
thing about  himself.  He  will  soon  be  more  dexter- 
ous in  getting  rid  of  God  out  of  his  own  mind  than 
in  studying  creation.  And  the  end  of  him  will  be 
'^  Ego,  et  natura  mea" 

That  such  an  end  is  possible,  not  only  for  indivi- 


dual scientific  men,  but  for  large  and  fruitful  realms 
of  science,  may  be  gathered  from  many  signs.     If 
we  look  back  into  the  past,  science  has  depended 
greatly  upon   the  peace  and  virtue  of  men.     The 
angels  who  announced  the  birth  of  Christ  therein 
also    announced    the    birth    of   immortal    science. 
Christianity,  through  all  its  terrible  vicissitudes  of 
war  and  crime,  has  contained  the  power  and  presence 
of  a  loving  and  rebuking  truth,  which  on  the  one 
hand  has  led  to  a  constant  renovation  of  social  order, 
and  on  the  other  to  an  appeal  to  justice  and  righteous- 
ness as  the  true  rulers  of  aflTairs.     It  has  contained 
in  it,  always  working,  though  often  invisible,  the 
enemy  to  all  common  superstition,  in  the  recognition 
of  the  divine  claims  of  natural  truth.      To  be  exact 
where  possible  flows  out  of  a  theology  which  exactly 
apprehends  the  Godhead  in  the  Lord   the  Christ. 
Accordingly,    the   aim   of    exactitude    in    physical 
science  has  been  gradually  increasing  from  century 
to  century  since  the  Christian  era  commenced.     At 
the  beginning  of  it  stands  in  nature   and   in   her 
laws   an  exact   and  divine  supernaturalism,  out  of 
which,  as  a  river  of  clear  water  out  of  the  throne, 
can  proceed  an  exact  and  correspondent  naturalism, 
the  gift  and  effluent  genius  of  God,  and  so  far  itself 
divine.     No  superstition,  and  no  unreasonableness, 
mars  the  reverent  faith  in  the  greatest  of  physio- 
logical facts,  the  incarnation  of  Jehovah  in  the  Lord. 
Its  essence  is  that  it  is  a  natural  fact ;  and  though 
dimly   comprehensible  at  present,   it   can   be  seen 
more  and  more  by  every  faculty  of  head  and  heart 
from  age  to  age.     Since  Swedenborg  wrote,  it  has 
entered  the  domain  of  the  sciences,  of  which  it  is 
the  future  king,  laid  in  that  good  man's  rational 
mind  as  in  a  manger. 


no 


A  NEW  STATE. 


Tn  the  field  of  this  sight  there  are  no  bubbles  of 
air,  but  a  sound  personality  at  the  centre.     So  also 
in  the  field  of  any  true  science  all  is  real  and  prac- 
tical   for    the    knowing.      The    geological   hammer 
and  the  astronomical  telescope  singly  aim  at   star 
and  rock,  without  any  duplex   thought    of   infinite 
space  and  time,  which  would  make  the  blow  of  the 
one  and    the  pointing  of  the  other  wavering  and 
ridiculous.     But  in  the  false  sciences,   which  have 
the  gas  of  vanity  instead  of  the  blood  of  natural 
truth  in  their  veins— that  is  to  say,  in  the  lusts  of 
science,  which  burn  to  aggrandize   the  human  self- 
hood—these two  mutually  destructive  aims  coincide, 
and  suns  and  planets  are  studied  with  one  eye,  while 
^'  a  sharp  look-out "  against  theologies  is  kept  by  the 
other  eye.     The  body  of  such  sciences  cannot  be  full 
of  light.     And  although  a  great  churchman  in  his 
cathedral  may  ask  one  eye  to  tolerate  the  other  eye, 
yet  a  horrible  squinting  attention  is  the  result,  and 
God  and  nature  are  both  missed  in  the  process. 

For  this  reason  it  is  probable  that  large  tracts  of 
so-called  science  will  be  given  up  as  mankind  makes 
advances  in  what  is  true  and  good.     Lusts  are  not 
easily  got  out  of  eyes  when  once  they  have  been 
enthroned   above   vision   within    them.       Scientific 
amaurosis  in  eyes  so  possessed  may  well  give  rise 
to  dreaming,  and  scientific  superstition  desolate  the 
land.     But  not  for  long  ;  because  the  land  itself  has 
true   value  ;    and  humble  cultivators,    receptive  of 
Christ   and    His  theology,  will   recolonize  it,  and 
make  it  fruitful  of  truths  for  His  sake,  for  nature's 
sake,  and  for  their  own  sakes. 

Already  we  note  that  one  eminent  man,  in  view 
of  late  manifestoes  of  materialism,  propounds  that  if 
this  is  the  way  of  science,  it  is  a  fair  question  whether 


A  A^EW  STATE, 


III 


it  shall  be  allowed  a  place  of  power  in  national  educa- 
tion. Now  here  legislation  may  play  a  serious  part  in 
regard  to  the  future  sway  of  the  lusts  of  science.  It 
may  discourage  their  growth,  and  kill  these  vanities 
somewhat.  Another  and  more  pregnant  concern  is, 
that  there  is  a  new  righteousness,  a  New  Church, 
with  new  revelations  opening  the  Word,  and  the 
spiritual  world,  in  the  world.  That  will  make  a 
difference  to  pursuits.  Many  things  that  seemed  im- 
portant to  the  natural  boj^,  science,  may  be  quite 
unimportant  to  science  when  he  is  a  spiritual-natural 
man.  He  will  come  to  value  tilings  for  ends,  for 
final  causes  pertinent  to  himself  here  and  hereafter. 
He  will  love  truth  for  its  own  sake,  because  it  is 
true,  and  pursue  it  into  the  final  office  of  its  exacti- 
tude. But  the  exactitude  will  be  for  an  end  ;  not 
to  be  pushed  irreverently  on  into  other  pretended 
exactitudes,  but  to  stand  as  an  organized  backbone 
in  the  mind,  as  a  support  and  a  fulcrum  for  other 
and  greater  truths  practical  to  the  regeneration  of  the 
man  and  his  fellows.  If  the  opposite  tack  were 
possible  to  be  sailed,  the  mind,  claiming  exactitude 
beyond  all  measure  of  truth,  would  become  bony 
throughout,  and  science  itself  would  become  an 
immeasurable  skeleton,  frightening  out  its  own  sun 
and  stars. 

In  truth,  the  vehement  antitheological  bent  of 
science  at  present  is  a  sign  that  matters  cannot  rest 
as  they  are,  but  that  a  war  in  the  internal  reo-ions  of 
the  mind,  where  theology  abides  with  those  who  have 
not  closed  themselves  against  it,  is  imminent.  For 
if  science  claims  to  be  antitheos  there,  and  to  sweep 
the  region  clear  because  there  are  no  sensual  facts  in 
it,  a  new  religion  confronts  the  invader,  and  marshals 
its  own  divine  experiences^  which  are  both  natural 


112 


LOVE  OF  DOMINION  IN  SCIENTISM. 


I> 


and  sensible,  for  the  encounter.     This  threatens  the 
peace    and    permanence    of    everything   which    is 
called   science   at   the   present   day.       The   British 
Association  for    several    years,    abandoning    purely 
scientific  themes  in  its  annual  orations,  has  virtu- 
ally entered  the  lists  against  all  theology  as  a  serious 
study  ;  and  thus  has  given  the  first  example  of  the 
dese^n  of  scientific  pursuits  in  favour  of  levyi^^^ 
war  aaainst  the  realities  of  the  religion  of  Christ. 
Just  In  passing,  it  is  well  to  remember   that  its 
atheism  is  coincident  with  its  horrible  cruelty   at 
Norwich,  which  has  brought  science  into  a  court  ot 
law  •  for  the  two  things  are,  as  we  shall  see  presently 
closely  connected.     Science  therefore  is  warned  not 
to  imagine  that  theology  will  submit  its  faith  m 
God,  and  creation  by  His  act,  to  the  measuremen  of 
scientific   rules,  or  will  postpone  belief  m  revealed 
truths  until  the  British  Association  has  confirmed 
them.      On    the  contrary,-war.     War    m    a  held 
where    a    true    theology  is    at    home,    and    where 
science  is   over  its  own  boundaries       War  which 
will  annex  science,  city  by  city,  and  provmce  after 
province,   to  that  theology,  or  leave  it  desolatecL 
A  war  of  conquest,  divinely  foreseen,  but  provoked 
by  science  for  its  own  false  glory  and  evil  purposes. 
Perhaps  the  first  general  mental  conflict  for  right- 
eousness ;  the  first  war  of  the  New  Jerusalem. 

XXIX. 

LOVE   OF    DOMINION    IN    SCIENTISM. 

Science  has  inherited  the  lusts  of  attack  which 
are  destroying  it,  from  the  love  of  dominion  in  the 


LOVE  OF  DOMINION  IN  SCIENTISM.        113 

past,  especially  as  it  is  embodied  in  the  Catholic 
and  Protestant  churches.  Such  scientism  is  simply 
Catholic  and  Protestant  atheism  and  materialism, 
the  church  of  self  represented  in  the  desire  to 
possess  the  whole  natural  world  in  knowledge  for 
power.  Laws  which  will  formulate  and  handle  and 
govern  all  things  are  its  cathedrals.  As  the  above 
ecclesiastical  churches  are  visibly  falling  into  ruins, 
the  spirit  of  dominion  which  animated  them  must  go 
somewhere,  — by  the  conservation  of  forces,  must, — 
and  like  the  dragon  cast  down  from  heaven,  it  falls 
upon  sciences  and  their  professions,  and  animates 
them  with  the  old  woeful  love  of  rule.  This  is 
again  why  there  will  and  must  be  war,  and  why 
scientism,  in  its  present  ideas,  conceptions,  and 
theories,  has  no  permanent  foothold  in  the  future 
of  the  human  race. 

It  is  surprising  how  soon  things  pass  away  when 
peoples  sink  out  of  their  rank  and  comprehension, 
and  having  pressing  daily  objects,  cease  to  care 
about  them.  The  excavators  find  the  limekilns  in 
which  the  marbles  of  Praxiteles  were  burnt  for 
mortar  to  be  used  in  building  common  houses ; 
statues  which  not  long  before  w^ere  in  the 
palaces  of  kings,  and  the  temples  of  gods.  But 
the  wheel  of  time  turning,  nobody  was  rich  enough 
in  care  to  do  them  any  longer  reverence.  So  it  will 
be  with  every  object,  however  costly  now,  that  is 
not  cared  about  for  ends  of  practical  good.  So  it 
will  assuredly  be  with  all  the  statues  of  personal 
renown  that  have  been  hewn  out  of  the  fair  quarries 
of  nature  by  the  mind  of  atheism  wielding  the 
chisel  of  analysis,  and  its  devilish  edge,  vivisection. 

Another  instance  from  geology.  It  has  been 
worked  of  late  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  present 

H 


114        LOVE  OF  DOMINION  IN  SCIENTISM. 

wear  and  tear  of  nature,  the  action  of  air,  fire  and 
water  on  a  great  scale,  and  the  rules  or  laws  of  that 
action  are  the  only  field  that  the  geologist  need 
enter  and  this  is  perhaps  true  so  far  as  the  ^^,^ 
of  the  earth's  crust  is  concerned.  The  detritus  of 
animal  and  vegetable  life  is  of  course  included  in  the 
causes  of  physfcal  change;  as  also  IS  the  action  of  hgh 

and  heat  and  of  ^vhat  are  called  the  imponderable 
fluids.  This  is  a  ^vide  but  humble  realm  of  scientific 
research  :  and  here  science  becomes  especially  sub- 

of  the  engmeers.     but  mart .     uut 
useful  grasp  of  nature  there   comes  forth  a  httle 
doctrine,  that  these  same  surface  causes  which  age 
by  age  give  the  earth  a  new  stone  coat,  are  the  only 
causes  that  have  played  from  the  begmning  ;  that 
there  is  change  of  materials  but  no  creation  ;  m  shor 
that  there  i^  no  beginning,  but  geological  time 
infinite.     Between  the  geology  and  this  hypothesis 
there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed.     The  geology  is  for  the 
Hiost   part   true'and  good,   and  follows  recognised 
sions  and  changes  on  the  earth  :  the  hypothesis  is 
baseless.     It  i^  indeed  quite  allowable  to  work  the 
thought  that  the  changes  of  to-day  are  the  same  in 
character  with  those  which  have  been  proceedmg  for 
any  needful  number  of  years  ;  and  thus  to  discovei 
how  much  that  looks  immense  and  violent  may  be 
accounted  for  by  long  times  and  persistent  agencies^ 
For  example,  a  sea  bottom  may  be  rising  a  foot  in 
a  hundred  years,  until  in  a  calculable  time  it  be. 
comes  high  dry  land.     But  when  the  leap  has  to  be 
made   that  all  planetary  contingencies   have   been 
^us  created  the  word  creation  startles  and  rouses 
luo  her  tnd  higher  mind.      Is  it  likely  that  wear 
Ind  tear  and  internal  uneasiness  are  the   creatoi  ? 


LOVE  OF  n  0 MINI  ON  IN  SCIENTISM.         1 1 5 

Is  there  not  another  order  in  the  nature  of  things  ; 
an  order  in  its  beginning  out  of  time,  and  which  is  a 
creative  act,  a  living,  mental,  spiritual,  divine  per- 
sonal order  ?     If  there  is,  geology  does  not  reach  it, 
or  touch  the  hem  of  its  garments.     It  need  not  do 
so ;  but  if  its  hypothesis  attacks  that  other  order,  it 
quits  its  own  domain,  is  no  longer  geology  but  Anti- 
theos,  and  in  losing  its  singleness  of  aim,  to  under- 
stand fairly  its  own  surfaces,  it  endangers  the  per- 
manence of  its  own  lines  of  investigation.     Peace  is 
its  necessity  as  a  science,  but  here  it   enters  war. 
If  to  its  utterly  free  labours  were  added  faith  in  the 
Lord  the  Creator,  analogies  could  come  down  from 
other  fields  to  animate  its  vast  carcase.     If  in  origin 
the  planets  are  a  personal  work,  have  our  minds  no 
leading-strings  to  help  them  to  admit  ways  altogether 
different  from  old  wear  and  tear  as  the  factors  of 
earths  ?     Place  a  man  before  you,  and  reason  back- 
wards on  the  current  geological  hypothesis  from  his 
present  to  his  past.      To-day  he  is  clad  with  his 
clothes  and  nourislied  by  his  meals,  and  made  up  of 
elements  from  without.     Are  the  chancres  that  now 
occur  in  him  day  by  day  a  sufficient  account  of  his 
birth,  parentage,  and  education  ?     Is  he  created  by 
meals,  and  was  he  born  in  a  tailor  s  suit  ?     Did  his 
tradesmen   plan   him  ?      His   beginning   was  very 
different ;  there  was  a   precedent  personal  love   of 
his  father  and  mother,  and  a  creative  act ;  he  was 
conceived  in  the  womb,  and  carried,  and  in  a  moment 
at  last  born  as  a  baby  ;  and  grew  from  one  great 
change  to  another,  by  a  process  always  from  within, 
to  his  adult  state.     Wear  and  tear  is  not  his  theory, 
but  his  dross  ;   and  the  matter  he  takes  in  is  not  his 
architect,  but  the  most  exterior  scaffolding  of  his 
true  temple.     Now  this,  and  many  other  analogies, 


ii6      SCIENCE  AS  FACULTY  IS  EVERLASTING. 

inhere  in  the  faith  in  a  creative  Lord,  and  cannot  be 
rooted  out  of  it.     Not  to  use  them  is  to  cease  to 
have  mental  operations  in  the  realms  beyond  science, 
and  to  be  content  with  denials  ;  for  the  mind  lives 
also  in  these  realms  as  well  as  in  the  lower  exacti- 
tudes ;   and  by  analogy  its  higher   operations   are 
founded   upon  the  lower,  and  keep  them  in  their 
places.      Analogy,  that  great   help,  here   rids   the 
mind  of  insufficient  causes,  and  will  be  the  medium 
that  unites  external  observation  with  religious  belief 
in  the  widest  field  of  common  sense.     But  again  it 
is   easy  to   see  that  in  discarding  it,  the  facts    of 
geological  science,  except  for  commerce  and  business, 
are  already  enough,  that  care  for  more  will  not  be 
permanent,  and  that  one  of  the  great  buildings  of 
present  knowledge  will  be  neglected  and  decay. 

"We  lay  it  down  as  certainty  that  only  where  the 
theological  mind  is  full  of  its  own  sufficient  informa- 
tions, and  where  the  scientific  mind  stands  freely 
under  it,  active  to  possess  itself  of  its  own  honest 
department,  can  there  be  any  peace  in  which  science 
can  advance.  In  the  other  case,  which  is  the  present 
case,  where  the  scientific  mind  is  full,  and  its  theo- 
logical faculties  empty,  it  must,  as  was  said  before, 
break  its  borders,  and  desert  its  own  native  country 
of  phenomena  in  which  alone  its  true  spirit  can 
subsist. 

XXX. 

SCIENCE    AS    FACULTY    IS    EVERLASTING. 


Science,  however,  will  be  permanent,  and  will  not 
decay,  for  it  comes  down  from  the  Lord,  in  whom  all 
knowledo-e,  natural  knowledge  included,  is  infinite 


SCIENCE  AS  FACULTY  IS  E VERLASTING.       1 1 7 

and  perfect ;  though  its  present  forms,  desecrated  too 
much,  will  cease  to  be  remembered.     Oblivion  has 
two  ends.     When  a  race  of  men  declines  and  decays 
from  a  higher  life  to  a  lower,  its  arts  and  industries, 
and  in  time  its  traditions,  perish  out  of  its  power, 
and  it  may  wander  as  a  nomadic  tribe  about  the 
ruins  of  the  cities  of  its  ancestors,  and  not  know  who 
built  them.      That  is  one  deep  forgetfulness.     On 
the  other  hand,  if  a  human  race  is  lifted  up  by  its  own 
free  permission  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  state,  from 
darkness  towards  light,  from   sensuality  to  virtue, 
from  insurgent  materialism   to   religious   humility, 
from  self  to  the  Lord,  such  a  race  will  unavoidably, 
of  His  mercy,  forget  the  past,  void  the  objects  of  its 
former  cares,  and  for  the  most  part,  except  Avhen 
remembering    its    discipline,    not    know    the    evil 
days  from  which  it  has  voluntarily  by   God's  will 
departed.     This  is   a   deep  and  a  blessed  oblivion. 
These  two  causes  will  at  length  combine  to  effect  the 
transition  from  the  present  sciences.     The  godless 
cultivators  will  fall  out  of  them,  as  no  longer  germane 
to  the  selfhood  of  their  lives.      The  New  Church  in 
entering  upon  them  will  change  and  regenerate  them, 
so  that  they  are  no  longer  recognisable  for   what 
they  were ;  for  they  will  now  exist  solely,  as  Lord 
Bacon  said,  ''  for  the  glory  of  God,  and  for  the  good 
of  man  s  estate." 

There  is  also  a  tender  sense  in  which  science  is  and 
ivdl  be  2Jerma7ient :  it  is  immortal  as  man  is  im- 
mortal.— When  the  great  Swedish  chemist  Berzelius 
was  dying,  he  underwent  a  sorrow  which  would  have 
been  assuaged  had  he  known  this  merciful  certainty. 
The  anecdote  is  contained  in  a  memoir  of  Berzelius 
by  Rektor  P.  A.  Siljestrom,  and  is  as  follows  :  He 
felt  that  his  last  hour  had  come,  and  that  he  must 


ii8     SCIENCE  AS  FACULTY  IS  EVERLASTING, 

take  leave  of  the  science  which  he  had  loved  so  well. 
He  therefore  summoned   one  of  his  most  devoted 
friends,  who  came  to  his  bedside  with  tears  in  his 
eyes.     Berzelius  also  broke  forth  into  weeping,  and 
when  the  first  emotion  was  over,  he  exclaimed  :  ''  Do 
not  wonder  that  I  weep.     You  know  I  am  not  weak 
{^IWuj),  and  I  do  not  fear  what  the  doctor  has  to 
announce  to  me ;  for  I  am  prepared  for  it  all.     But 
in  this  hour  I  have  to  bid  farewell  to  science,  and 
you  must  not  wonder  that  it  is  hard  for  me.      What 
my  lot  shall  be  only  the  Almighty  knows."^      He 
did   not   then   know   that   beyond   nature,  beyond 
space  and  time,  superior  to  space  and  time  because 
living  and  spiritual,  living  because  correspondmg  to 
the  Lord  who  is  its  sun,  and  to  the  immortal  people, 
changing  as  they  change  from  good  to  good,  there  is 
a  spmtual  world,  into  which  every  man  of  woman 
born  carries  his  affections  and  his  acquired  character 
immediately  after  death.     When  space  and  time  are 
taken  off  the  mind  as  old  clothes,  the  garments  of 
new  perception  are  given,  and  that  spiritual  world  is 
sensibly  entered  upon.     Every  form  of  this  lower 
creation  is  there  extant,  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  earths 
with  their  kingdoms,  and  all  inhabited  by  human 
characters  that  correspond  to  them  exactly,  and  are 
in  their  final  causes.     It  is  the  correspondence,  as 
was  said  above,  the  correspondence  or  justice  of  that 
world  and  all  its  parts,  that  makes  it  alive  ;  for  it  is 
the  prolongation  of  good  and  evil,  and  their  pro- 
cession outwards  on  the  scale  of  worlds ;  what  the 
Word  of  the  Lord  calls  heaven  and  hell.      In  that 
heaven  no  Berzelius  misses  his  heaven  in  his  darling 
pursuits.     His  chemist  heart  was  not  given  here  to 

1  Minnesfest  bfver  J.  J.  Berzelius  firad  af  Litteratur-SdllsJcapet  i  Stock- 
holm den  20  Januari  1849. 


SCIENCE  AS  FA  C  UL TV  IS  E  VERLASTING.    1 1 9 

meet  with  the  accident  of  threescore  years  and  ten, 
and  perish  of  it,  but  to  have  a  spiritual  chemist  life 
disclosed  in  him,  a  life  not  subject  to  tears  ;  a  life 
founded  upon  his  life  in  nature,  and  for  w^hich  that 
Hfe  was  bestowed.  There  the  Linnes  and  the 
Hunters  and  the  Lyells  can  and  will  pursue  their 
sciences,  so  far  as  they  please,  subservient  to  all  that 
is  above  science,  in  innocence,  peace,  and  permanence. 
The  sciences  of  the  earth  are  preparations  for  the 
modest  immeasurable  sciences  which  are  to  be  o-iven 
when  we  die. 


I 


SWEDENBORG. 


121 


PAET  II. 
SWEDENBORG  AND  A  NEW  SCIENCE. 


XXXI. 

SWEDENBORG. 

If  any  one  is  willing  to  know  how  spiritual  things 
are  real,  how  space  and  time,  and  their  order  of  suns 
and  systems,  are  not  incompatible  with  suns  and 
systems  and  measureless  extenses  in  which  space 
and  time  have  no  part,  and  in  which  minutes  and 
inches  are  impossible;  how  the  natural  world  is 
small  and  the  supernatural  world  great,  he  is  recom- 
mended to  read  the  writings  of  Swedenborg,  where 
alone  that  knowledge  can  be  obtained  ;  and  wdiere  it 
is  imparted  with  a  definite  power  which  needs  no 
present  supplements  for  man. 

If  this  seems  out  of  place  in  continuation  of  our 
remarks  on  the  relation  of  science  to  good  and  evil, 
it  is  submitted  that  it  is  not  really  so  for  the  fol- 
lowing reason.  The  enemies  of  religion  and  its 
attendant  sciences  have  thrown  up  their  earthworks 
in  the  ground  of  natural  science.  They  have  opened 
a  game  at  which  two  can  play.  Every  man  is  bound 
to  enter  the  field  with  his  religion,  and  take  up  the 
challenge  if  he  can.  It  was  very  well  when  religion 
was  excluded  ;  good  manners  might  fairly  keep  back 


the  theme,  although  at  the  expense  of  much  of  the 
intercourse  in  which  man's  heart  warms  man's.  But 
when  the  main  business  preached  as  the  be-all  and 
the  end-all  of  scientific  processes  and  formulas  is 
atheism  and  materialism,  manners  are  withdrawn 
as  a  bolt,  and  the  floodgates  of  plain  speaking  are 
opened.  Even  if  the  scientific  policy  retreats  upon 
sneers,  the  same  thing  is  done ;  and  materialism 
will  constantly  be  confronted  by  revelation,  illumina- 
tion, and  rational  religion  warring  from  its  own 
sphere.  It  will  meet  the  incarnation  of  God  in  the 
Lord  at  every  turn.  This  is  British  fair  play.  After 
the  polemical  rings  of  late  British  Associations,  it  is 
but  following  their  suit  to  put  the  spiritual  other 
side  before  their  meeting  whenever  an  opportunity 
occurs,  and  to  leave  their  poor  science  out  in  the 
cold  as  they  have  done.  Unfortunately  bishops  and 
clergy  know  little  of  these  things,  and  are  at  the 
mercy  of  their  foes.  But  the  knowledge  is  in  the 
world,  and  can  be  had  by  those  who  are  willino-  to 
receive  it. 

There  is  a  propliecy  in  the  Word  which  shows 
what  is  coming  upon  the  earth  as  it  has  always  come 
in  heaven.  "  In  that  day  there  shall  be  a  highway 
out  of  Egypt  to  Assyria,  and  the  Assyrian  shall 
come  into  Egypt,  and  the  Egyptian  into  Assyria,  and 
the  Egyptians  shall  serve  with  the  Assyrians.  In 
that  day  shall  Israel  be  the  third  with  Egypt  and 
with  Assyria,  a  blessing  in  the  midst  of  the  land, 
whom  the  Lord  of  Hosts  shall  bless,  saying,  Blessed 
be  Egypt  My  people,  and  Assyria  the  work  of  My 
hands,  and  Israel  Mine  inheritance."  The  w^ords 
have  a  soul  in  their  body ;  a  spiritual  sense  in  the 
letter.  Egypt  signifies  science  ;  Assyria  signifies 
reasoning ;  the  highway  out  of  Egypt  into  Assyria 


122 


SWEDENBORG. 


THE  LA  IV  OF  USE  CONFRONTS  SCIENTISM.  123 


is  the  opened  communication  of  sciences  with  the 
rational  mind  as  the  lower  platform  of  the  spiritual. 
In  the  next  act  Egypt  and  Assyria  are  subservient, 
and  Israel,  or  the  spiritual  mind,  the  creation  ot  the 
Word  and  the  life  proceeding  from  it,  enters  upon 
the  scene,  and  is  the  tliird,  the  all-in-all-for  three 
and  all  the  threes  in  three  signify  all-in  science 
and  in  reasonings ;  yet  not  in  domination    but  in 
freedom  of  man's  own  yielding  ;  for  it  is  said,  Israel 
shall  be  the  third  xmih  Egypt  and  with  Assyria,  as 
if  the  companions  were  equals ;  for  whenever  the 
Lord    comes    to    our   freedom   He   will   not   seem 
greater  than  ourselves.     It  is  added  that  this  all-in- 
all  this  third,  is  even  a  blessing  in  the  midst  of  the 
land  ;  which  signifies  the  Divine  mercy,  and  its  in- 
fluence,  descending   through   Israel,   the    spiritual 
mind,  by  the  serving  of  the  rational  and  scientific 
minds,  into  the  New  Church,  which  is  the  midst  ot 
the  land      Herein  at  last  all   these  faculties  live 
consciously  from  their  Creator  and  Eedeemer,  who 
stands  at  the  door  and  knocks,  and  when  it  is  opened 
by  us,  opens  into  them ;  and  the  knowledges  of  all 
thino-s,  the  sciences,  the  reasons,  are  by  suboixlina 
tion°filled  with  the  love  and  the  wisdom  which  are 
the  heat  and  the  light  which  created  them      bo 
alone,  as  Bacon  says,  can  knowledge  be  the  double  ot 
existence.     This  is  the  prophecy,  dimly  set  torth 
here,  of  those  words  of  Isaiah  (chap.  xix.  ver.  23-2d). 
It   is   commended   with   earnest    good-will   to   the 
students  of  the  British  Association. 


XXXII. 

THE    LAW    OF    GOOD    USE    CONFRONTS    SCIENTISM. 

The  above  considerations  tend  to  prune  the  ex- 
cesses of  the  scientific  mind.  Mere  curiosity  and 
ambition,  constituting  in  their  union  a  false  love  of 
knowledge,  cannot  but  be  rebuked  by  them.  The 
conclusion  is  inevitable,  that  science  exists  for  pur- 
poses— for  ^'  ends  of  use,"  and  that  the  incessant 
prosecution  of  it  in  many  directions  is  vain  and 
frivolous.  The  science  which  is  attempted  from  the 
mere  love  of  knowing  must  be  limited  at  last  by  the 
account  of  the  truths  which  accrue  from  it,  and  these 
must  be  tested  by  the  good  which  proceeds  from 
them.  That  good  is  mainly  educative,  to  enlarge 
men  s  minds,  that  they  may  be  better  and  clearer 
organs  for  duty.  Accumulations  of  facts  much 
beyond  this  are  the  prey  of  avarice,  and  corrupt  the 
science,  as  the  miser  corrupts  and  is  corrupted  by 
his  gold.  It  is  not  that  any  despotic  doctrine  of 
utility,  a  term  far  inferior  to  use,  shall  have  right  to 
board  the  'Challenger,'  and  under  the  plea  oicui  hono^ 
terminate  the  voyage  of  the  boat  of  science ;  or 
arrest  the  botanist  in  his  excursions,  and  ask  him 
for  a  certificate  of  the  use  of  his  facts.  No  man  is 
bound  at  any  particular  time  to  point  out  the  use  of 
his  discoveries  ;  it  may  be  centuries  before  some 
other  man  is  born  who  can  show  that.  The  change 
does  not  strike  the  accumulation  of  facts  by  fair 
means  (abominable  means  are  of  course  unlawful), 
but  imports  that  a  new  spirit  presides  over  discovery 
and  its  possessions.     The  attempt  to   be  as  gods, 


■■I 


124  THE  LA  W  OF  USE  CONFRONTS  SCIENTISM. 

and    comprehend    all    things,    is    given    up  ;    the 
idea  that  the  universe,  or  any  single  thing  in   it 
can  be  put  into  a  formula,  when  it  is  only  in  God 
that  it  has  its  being,  is  carefully  repressed  in  the 
mind      The  aim  to  make  surfaces  in  their  gathered 
involution  into  substance,  and  the  only  substance, 
is  seen  to  be  folly.     Then  failing  this  end  of  know- 
ledge,  to  know   absolutely    by    intelligence    from 
selC  intdUgmtla  ex  se,  and  the  self  being  opened  by 
the  self-denial  of  giving  these  false  ways  up    other 
ends   of  a  better    sort,    descending    through    the 
openinc.   effected   from   above,   must    supplant  the 
first  lust  of  knowledge,  and  transform  it  into  the 
.ood  and  orderly  love  of  knowing.     The  first  col- 
fections   of   facts    were   not,   you   will    remember, 
fathered  for  their  own  sakes,  but  with  the  express 
view  of  comprehending  all  things  ;    a  very  concrete 
human  passion  from  the  beginning  of  recoixls.     ihe 
philosophies  have   aimed   at   the   same    thing  -  o 
Lclude'  universality.       It  cannot  but  be  tha    t he 
reverse  spirit  to  this,  prosecuting  facts  most  fieely, 
shall  yet  work  them  with  some  limitation  to  the 
uses  of  human  life.     That  a  time  shall  come  when  a 
wise  physiologist  shall  say,  we  have  enough  physio- 
logy at  present  for  any  soul  that  our  m.nds  can  se 
inft :  sLes  enough  and  to  spare  for  the  corp.-«a 
architecture  of  to-day.      That  a   time   shall   come 
when  all  the  sciences  shall  be  applied  sciences  ,  onlj 
;tt  some  of  them  will  be  applied  to  the  uses 
spiritual  society  ;  to  found  it  ever  more  and  nioi^ 
on  conveniences  of  high  thought  and  punctual  ce 
tainty  attested  by  very  nature  ;  as  the  other    - 
applied  to  the  uses  of  external  life  and  it     socnet^ 
That  a  turning-point  shall  then  ensue  ;  and  a  pubhc 
recognition  be  made,  that  the  regeneration  of  men 
from  their  hereditary  and  acquired  evils  of  character 


TffE  FIRE  OF  USE  IN  SCIENCE. 


125 


is  the  true  university  and  school  of  science,  from 
which  alone  can  issue  any  pure,  progressive  and  per- 
manent knowledge  of  the  works  of  the  Lord  in  any 
of  His  kingdoms.  It  is  not  likely  that  the  glory  of 
this  second  science  will  be  lesser  than  the  glory  of 
the  first,  for  it  will  be  of  God,  burning  and  shining 
through  the  heart  and  mind  of  the  explorer  into  the 
faculties  of  nature  ;  creating  answerable  sight  as 
the  river  of  light  flows  on ;  and  putting  away  as 
visibly  obstructive  that  self-glory  Avhich  hardens  the 
heart  and  darkens  the  eyes  of  ambition  and  curiosity 
in  their  23ath,  and  forestops  them  from  seeing  any 
detail  of  the  purposes  of  the  Almighty  in  His 
works.  The  science  that  springs  up  then  as  a  new 
city  through  the  mind  will  not  be  limited  to  lecture 
halls  of  students  and  meetings  of  savans,  but  the 
human  race  will  walk  for  business  and  pleasure  in 
the  sunny  streets  of  its  truths. 


XXXIII. 

THE   FIRE   OF   USE   IN   SCIENCE. 

There  is  this  forecast  of  the  success  of  such  a 
revolution  in  the  ends  and  ways  of  knowledge,  that 
the  applied  sciences  already  occupy  a  large  field, 
without  which  science  in  general  would  lack  a  sub- 
stantial body.  Take  medicine  as  an  example,  and 
the  humble  quantity  of  anatomy  and  physiologj'' 
which  goes  along  with  it.  This  anatomy  and  physio- 
logy is  no  more  than  as  it  were  the  general  geo- 
graphy of  the  various  organs  and  parts,  and  the 
broad  knowledge  of  their  functions.  This  is  one 
support   of  a  medical   education,  and   suffices  for 


4 


126 


THE  FIRE  OF  USE  IN  SCIENCE. 


practice;  indeed  a  large  portion  of  brilliant  practice 
can  exist  without  it.  But  being  acquired,  it  is  con- 
tinually enriched  with  living  observations  ;  disease 
and  health  in  their  external  results  are  added  to  it ; 
mental  conditions  modify  it ;  emotions  inhabit  it 
locally ;  climate  plays  upon  it  as  an  instrument ; 
temperance  blesses  it ;  good  cheer  delights  it ;  and 
in  short,  the  knowledge  of  this  practical  anatomy  is 
made  into  the  field  of  the  first  set  of  perceptions  and 
imaginations  by  which  the  inner  man  lays  hold  of  the 
facts  of  habitation  in  the  outer  covering  of  the  body. 
It  is  the  purse  of  all  symptoms  in  which  gifted 
observation  turns  them  into  gold.  Observe,  how- 
ever, that  there  must  not  be  too  much  of  it.  If  it 
becomes  minute  and  subtle,  it  will  be  derisive  of  use, 
and  will  chase  away  the  life  which  comes  from  with- 
out, and  supplant  it  by  microscopic  nature,  ignoring 
the  larger  sphere.  If  practice  survives,  and  the 
healer  is  not  converted  into  a  covert  professor,  a 
thousand  little  chemical  crotchets  will  contend  in 
his  mind  for  the  mastery  vacated  by  broad  com- 
petence. The  result  is  that  the  applied  knowledge 
is  a  better  basis  than  the  abstract  knowledge  of  pro- 
toplasm, and  cells,  and  cell-germs,  and  the  intimacies 
of  physical  organs;  containing  as  it  does  the  stand- 
ing forms  of  life;  there  is  more  knowledge  of  the 
body  of  a  man  in  a  stable  grain  of  it  than  there  is 
in  a  pound  of  little  bits  of  carnality  which  cannot  be 
seen  as  a  whole.  And  if,  at  any  time,  common 
anatomy  becomes  so  full  of  informations  and  percep- 
tions that  it  overflows  with  truths,  it  is  easy  to  open 
deeper,  to  be  more  particular,  and  to  offer  a  fresh 
incarnation  for  the  practical  science  which  has  as  yet 
no  place  in  forms. 

The  same  remarks  apply  to  other  sciences  ;  they 


THE  FIRE  OF  USE  IN  SCIENCE. 


12^ 


^ 


i-^ 


are  more  rich  in  substantial  detail  the  more  they  are 
cultivated  for  their  application  to  the  arts  and  the 
purposes  of  life.  What  so  productive  as  chemistry, 
in  which  all  the  results  would  be  put  to  use  if  the 
discoverer  of  new  substances  had  his  wdll.  Chemistry 
is  most  favourably  separated  from  mischief ;  it  is  a 
beautiful  island  of  knowledge,  which  does  not  invade 
the  continents  of  theology  and  spiritual  truth.  It 
advances  constantly,  because  it  is  more  and  more 
required  by  the  growing  wants  of  society,  and  its 
history  shows  that  it  is  an  open  liand  of  good,  from 
which  careful  students  can  take  any  gift  in  its 
power  for  the  endowment  and  convenience  of  the 
people.  And  not  ambitious  beyond  its  scope,  like 
the  physiologist,  who  would  cut  life  to  find  life,  or 
the  geologist,  w^ho  pushes  dead  matter  onwards,  and 
contends  at  last  that  its  rolling  ball  of  years  is  vice 
the  Creator,  what  a  palace  of  glittering  substances, 
cohering  by  their  own  laws,  arises  out  of  the  labora- 
tory where  no  torture  is  done,  but  products  at  once 
perfectly  natural  and  artificial  are  yielded  to  the 
mind  that  contrives  and  works  their  makinof.  Seeinof 
no  atoms  with  the  senses,  yet  the  genius  of  a  Dalton 
gives  us  here  an  atomic  theory,  which  introduces  a 
kind  of  astronomy  into  every  natural  substance. 
The  salt,  the  crystal,  and  the  gas,  hang  in  laws 
as  the  planets  hang  in  the  sky.  What  a  woeful 
thing  it  would  be  for  chemistry  if  it  could  once  get 
into  its  head  that  its  main  business  is  to  assault 
theology,  and  to  plant  its  empire  on  the  ruins  of  the 
Christian  reliofion.  It  would  be  converted  into  a 
petty  arsenal,  and  its  projectiles  would  provoke 
reprisals,  in  which  the  peace  and  powder  of  the  labora- 
tory would  come  to  an  end. 

To  sum  this  up  :  the  abstract  sciences,  the  truths 


128 


THE  FIRE  OF  USE  IN  SCIENCE. 


of  nature  pursued  for  their  own  sakes,  are  a  kind  of 
cerebellum  in  knowledge,  standing  at  the  back  of  life, 
underground,  in  a  secret  place;  full  and  compact  in 
compressed  laminae,  with  the  passions  of  human 
nature  as  it  is,  ready  to  burst  forth  and  conquer  the 
world.  A  needful  fire,  for  without  this  strong:  self- 
hood  mercifully  hidden  deep  down  the  other  motives 
of  men  w^ould  not  be  sufficient  to  warm  any  pursuit  into 
vigorous  life.  There  is  not  love  enough  in  the  world  to 
take  the  whole  place  of  any  passion  yet,  and  be  the 
passion.  So  men  must  work  the  sciences  in  abstract 
forms  for  their  own  glory  too.  This  is  the  root  and 
use  of  the  boundless  attempts  of  the  unapj)lied  and 
unappliable  sciences. 

The  cerebrum  of  the  sciences  is  human  use,  the 
knowledge  that  has  practice  and  good  works  for  an 
end.  All  the  honest  businesses  of  life  stand  between 
the  abstract  and  the  practical  sciences,  separating 
them  the  one  from  the  other,  and  only  allowing 
conscious  communication  through  the  organs  of  use. 
Wisdom  and  intelligence,  which  cannot  get  into  pure 
astronomy  or  geology,  or  physiology,  play  into  the 
arts  and  sciences  which  subserve  an  apprehended 
purpose  in  the  world.  In  these,  man,  unobtrusively, 
from  the  necessity  of  the  case,  is  like  a  creator  ;  and 
as  they  pervade  society,  and  alter  history  in  its  con- 
ditions, the  analogies  of  human  life  meet  them  and 
enter  their  transparent  bodies.  The  arts  of  life  are 
the  reasons  of  their  being  ;  and  final  purposes,  unde- 
niable, present  themselves  to  the  reason,  which  has 
to  enlighten  itself  by  correctly  judging  how  the  pur- 
pose is  carried  out  by  the  substance.  A  perpetual 
soul  in  nature  reveals  itself  in  the  unbroken  forms  of 
uses  ;  a  soul  of  purpose  in  every  newly  elicited  pro- 
duct ;  for  nature  is  nothing  but  divine-human  uses, 


USES, 


129 


nothing  but  final  causes  plated  over  for  final  causes 
with  matter.  Every  stone  of  it  is  architecture.  In 
this  inhabitation  of  ends  in  the  art-nature  of  the 
practical  sciences,  a  communication  is  opened  with 
the  larger  spaces  of  the  abstract  sciences ;  and 
natural  knowledge  acquires  faith  that  the  realms  of 
space  and  time  universal  are  as  much  under  divine 
use  as  the  husbandman's  field,  or  the  bourse  of  the 
city.  Infinite  space  and  time  die  here,  and  love  and 
wisdom  are  the  new  correlates.  At  the  same  time 
the  abstract  sciences  have  gained  fresh  fires,  and  like 
vestal  virgins  feed  them  night  and  day  ;  and  they 
well  insist  that  the  field  is  more  boundless  than 
before  ;  that  final  causes  are  for  ever  interpretable 
by  new  common  sense  into  less  limited  thought,  and 
that  the  generations  of  art  and  science  can  have  no 
end,  to  which  the  practical  sciences  respond  in  say- 
ing, save  "the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  man's 
estate." 

XXXIV. 

USES. 

Gutta-percha  was  made  by  God  Almighty  in  order 
that  ocean  telegraphs  should  succeed  ;  oil  was  made 
for  lamps,  and  the  fruits  of  the  earth  for  food  ; 
flowers  were  made  that  gardens  might  be  beautiful  ; 
and  silkworms  that  silk  dresses  might  be  spun.  For 
every  honest  use,  in  its  time  and  place,  the  thing 
used  was  made.  The  uses  are  souls  from  Him,  and  the 
things  are  the  bodies  of  the  uses.  So  far  the  prac- 
tical sciences.  Here  their  own  trade,  and  their 
religion,  is  consummated.     The  speculative  sciences 

step  in,  and  secretly  enlarge  the  statement.     Use 

I 


I30 


USES. 


USES. 


131 


themselves   grow,   and  will   grow   for  ever.      The 
Lord's  KinCxDom  is  a  Kingdom  of  Uses    (Sweden- 
borg).     Gratitude  to  the  Lord  for  it  all  is  the  first 
new  position.     He  in  Himself,  and  then  in  us,  is  the 
instrument  maker  of  all  the  forms  of  use.     The  first 
ends,  or  first  final  causes,  have  other  ends  visibly 
added  to  them  as  need  comes  on  :  the  others  were 
always  at  hand  to  step  forth  and  reveal  themselves 
when  the  roll-call  summoned  them.     The  straight 
and  curved  lines  of  the  first  copy-book  are  not  only 
for  practice  towards  writing,  but  in  time  they  are 
the  integers  of  writing;  they  are  not  put  aside,  but 
woven  and  corrected  into  letters,  which   are   their 
final  causes.     The  letters  are  linked  into  their  ends, 
words ;  and  there  meanings  meet  the  product,  and 
conscious  words  are  now  more  living  ends.     Then 
words  by  descent  of  higher  meaning  become  terms, 
and  express  the  mind.      But  in  all  the  process  the 
inhabitation  of  purposes  is  the  animating  principle. 
Strokes  straight  and  curved  are  not  evolved  into 
letters,  but  previous  letters   enter  them   for   each 
class  of  the  young,  and  engender  letters  out  of  the, 
as  it  were,  inorgfanic  forms  ;  for  the  strokes  have  no 
meaning  but  adaptation.      So  the  letters   are   not 
evolved  into  words,  but  existing  words  take  them  as 
atoms,  and  plate  them  on  in  spelling.     Nor  are  the 
words  evolved  into  meaning  ;  but  previous  meaning 
lays  hold  of  them  as  its  expression.     The  mental 
process,  the  creative  process  here,  is  not  evolution, 
but   assumption   of  the  lower   by  the  pre-existent 
higher  ;  not  the  push  of  nature  upwards,  so  that  the 
product  is  one  with  the  matter,  but  first  the  impreg- 
nation and  then  the  subjugation  of  the  matter,  so 
that  the  descending  organic  and  organific  purpose 
bares  and  uncovers  itself  in  the  process  ;  the  higher 


end  being  never  enclosed  in  the  lower,  but  added  to 
it  at  appointed  stages  by  the  teacher,  human  or  divine. 
Of  course  the  pupil  has  organic  faculties  capable  of  the 
higher  ends,  or  they  could  not  be  received  when  they 
are  taught.  But  these  faculties  also  are  out  of  each 
other,  stand  in  tiers  or  degrees,  and  are  opened  suc- 
cessively, and  for  the  time  the  teacher  is  out  of  them 
all,  and  above  them  all,  and  has  peculiar  faculties  of 
his  own  for  communication.  The  pre-existence  of 
the  hio-her,  and  its  descent,  is  the  principle  of  know- 
ledge  and  of  obedience  here. 

Thus  final  causes  are  enlarged  as  they  are  required, 
and  yet  are  final,  or  ends,  for  each  particular  stage. 
Ends  are  organic,  and  they  exist  in  series  and  orders  ; 
first  organized  as  embryos ;  next  as  children ;  next 
as  adults,  and  so  forth.  They  inhabit  brain  and 
nerve,  and  muscle  and  sense,  and  necessarily  follow 
the  organic  forms  in  their  distribution,  for  they  are 
the  real  man.  Consequently  they  are  the  spiritual 
brain,  the  spiritual  nervous  system,  the  will  in  the 
muscles ;  and  they  have  all  the  glomeration,  fibril- 
lation, fasciculation,  co-ordination,  that  is  correlated 
to  them  in  the  visible  anatomy  of  the  body.  The 
student  of  the  body  is  studying  the  soul  in  it  if  he 
is  engaged  upon  a  pursuit  that  has  true  reference  to 
life.  ""Ends  or  final  causes  are  bodies,  which  will  be 
reimbodied  over  and  over  again,  beginning  from  the 
bottom,  and  putting  it  off  continually  when  its  use 
is  served ;  and  this  they  do  for  ever. 

The  same  occurs  in  nature.  All  her  forms  and 
processes  are  for  ends,  for  final  causes,  which  are 
also  for  ever  organic.  Grass  is  for  all  that  can  come 
of  grass,  now  and  hereafter.  To  pasture  cattle,  to 
make  hay,  to  make  mould,  to  be  beautiful  to  the  eye, 
to  harbour  insect  and  bird,  to  sell  in  the  market  and 


1 


t  I 

t  ; 

I 


132 


C/SjES. 


sustain  the  landlord  and  the  farmer  and  the  labourer. 
To  be  made  into  milk  in  cows,  which  themselves 
are  a  new  departure  in  final  causes.     These  are  its 
ends.      It  has  others:   to  modify   atmosphere,    to 
receive  lio-ht  and  heat  on  a  new  surface,  and  adapt 
them  to  the  vegetable  creation.     It  has  others  :  to 
be   a  pleasant  sward  for   mankind,  to   refresh  the 
senses,  and  give  the  mind  their  delight ;  to  be  the 
floor  of  pleasant  stor-ies  and  songs,  and  the  tented 
field  of  hymns  ;  to  be  soft  to  the  feet  of  little  chil- 
dren, and  enter  the  loving  memory  of  their  childhood ; 
also  to  feed  the  natural  good  affections  of  artist  and 
poet  with  its  innocent  pasturage.     It  is  also  meant  to 
be  very  difficult  to  draw  and  to  paint ;  and  thus  with 
tiny  blades  to  chastise  artist  conceit.     It  has  other 
ends  for  the  man  of  science,  the  philosopher,  and 
the   divine.      All  these  ends  are  intended  by  the 
Creator;  and  indefinite  myriads  of  uses  besides.     It 
may  also  be  perverted  into  exact  oppositions  to  its 
uses,  and  the  freedom  to  do  the.  perversions  is  also 
intended  in  the  man,  though  not  at  first  hand  in  the 
c^rass.     Thus  the  grass  is  a  divine  office  or  institution 
comprising   an   amazing    number    of    departments. 
And  because  it  is  abused,  or  because  the  uses  are 
juvenile,  that  does  not  contravene  the  fact  that  each 
blade  of  grass  is  filled  with  final  causes. 

As  this  is  so,  and  as  there  is  a  spirit  in  man 
which  lives  when  his  body  dies,  the  institution, 
grass,  is  equated  and  correlated  in  the  higher  life, 
and  wherever  the  mind  travels  you  know  you  will 
find  it  again  with  a  difference  according  to  the 
sphere.  It  is  a  form,  a  sentence,  in  the  Divine 
Word,  spiritual  in  the  spiritual  world,  and  natural 
in  the  natural.  And  a  high  use  of  its  presence  on 
the  ground  of  nature,  is,  to  implant  by  the  external 


USES, 


133 


sense  an  express  image  of  a  real  w^ord  that  has  ever- 
lasting signification.  Thus  final  causes,  plane  by 
plane,  correspond  to  final  causes,  and  they  all  lead 
up,  putting  off  grossness  on  the  way,  to  that  divine- 
human  life  Avhich  penetrates  and  momentaneously 
creates  the  whole.  Each  plane  prepares  for  that 
above  it,  because  it  contains  the  letters  which  in  the 
next  plane  are  words,  and  in  the  next  are  truths ; 
and  so  forth.  But  always  bear  in  mind  that  the 
whole  is  substantial  and  organic. 

So  much  in  brief  declaration  of  final  causes. 
They  are  momentaneously,  as  was  said  above,  the 
creative  forces  or  mind  in  everything.  To  find  out 
what  they  are  is  to  attain  a  reason  of  being  for 
everything  ;  and  requires  a  New^ton  for  each  special 
case,  or  indeed  much  more,  an  illuminated  Sweden- 
borg.  Not  a  single  final  cause,  or  correspondence  of 
such,  in  its  last  resort,  can  be  attained  by  man  with- 
out a  special  revelation. 

The  momentaneousness  of  God's  will  shocks  the 
scientific  mind,  looking  at  the  fixity  of  nature  and 
her  great  constancy.  But  then  the  will  is  more 
fixed  than  the  matter,  and  though  it  acts  down  upon 
time  and  space  according  to  their  moments,  and 
were  it  withdrawn  they  would  cease,  yet  it  holds  to 
unvariableness,  and  is  not  to  be  impugned  by  the 
mind  because  it  is  ever  in  operation,  and  never  lets 
nature  go.  The  order  of  nature  is  His  order ;  as 
has  been  well  said  by  Harris,  ''  the  laws  of  nature 
are  nothing  else  than  the  immediate  volitions  of  the 
Almighty."  Immediate,  yet  eternal ;  the  Divine 
Love'throuo-h  the  Divine  Wisdom  their  spring. 


134 


CORRELATION  OF  FORCES, 


XXXV. 


CORRELATION  OF  FORCES,  LOVE,  WILL,  MIND. 

It  seems  a  marvel  that  some  excelling  minds  of 
the  present  day  should  have  limited  scientific  thought 
to  the  world  of  the  senses,  when  there  is  within 
ken  so  much  more  than  the  senses  comprise,  all 
of  which  inevitably  has  its  science.  The  correlation 
and  conversion  of  forces  occurs  to  us  here.  All 
forces  mean  pushes  from  something  behind  them,  or 
drawinofs  towards  somethinof  before  them,  or  de- 
flections  of  moving  bodies  by  side  strings  of  power. 
We  see  the  rush  of  things.  Yet  the  mind,  observing 
the  will,  is  the  only  thing  that  gives  an  idea  of  real 
force  in  direction  to  some  conceived  end.  How  is  it 
then  that  heat  and  light  and  electricity  and  magnet- 
ism should  terminate  the  account  of  mundane  force  ; 
and  that  mental  force,  the  royal  percipient  of  the 
rest,  should  not  enter  into  the  correlation  ?  How  is 
it  that  love,  affection,  motive,  which  is  the  spring  of 
all  action,  should  not  be  considered  on  its  ow^n  plane, 
and  form  its  own  plates  in  the  science  of  the  vast 
battery  of  the  universe.  We  know  by  revelation, 
and  illumination  of  the  rational  faculty,  and  its 
superior  eyes,  that  there  is  a  Divine  Love  and  a 
spiritual  sun.  How  easy  it  seems  to  bring  this 
into  the  former  correlation.  All  the  world  over  love 
is  hot  and  wisdom  is  light  in  the  languages.  The 
Divine  Love  and  Wisdom,  pulsing  from  the  spiri- 
tual sun,  and  proceeding  through  the  heavens, 
strike  nature  in  her  prepared  germs  into  suns  and 
systems,  into  worlds  of  heat  and  light,  thus  propa- 


LOVE,    WILL,  MIND, 


135 


gating  correspondences  or  correlations  through  every 
object.  Here  also  one  of  the  terms  is  known,  yea, 
self-evident ;  love  and  wisdom  are  expressions  from 
consciousness  and  conscience.  All  that  is  good  and 
true  in  the  world  knows  them.  Therefore,  in  workino* 
the  algebraic  signs  of  unknown  forces,  why  disregard 
the  only  known  figures  or  correlates  from  the  equa- 
tion ;  why  w^ork  signs  alone  when  the  thing  signified 
is  self-evident,  and  ready  to  take  its  place,  and 
eager  to  be  employed,  to  resolve  the  rest  into 
known  quantities  ?  The  answer  must  be,  that  our 
little  human  persons,  with  their  loves,  which  con- 
stitute only  personal  fires  and  forces,  are  too  small 
to  furnish  a  correlation  with  the  fervid  suns  of  the 
universe.  But  in  the  first  place  a  grain  of  what  is 
higher,  if  you  please  a  germ,  may  be  in  correspon- 
dence above  with  a  whole  world  of  what  is  lower. 
In  the  second  place,  love,  so  fiir  as  it  is  permitted  to 
receive  its  all  from  the  Lord,  is  the  end  for  which 
man  exists,  and  for  which  the  world  was  made ;  all 
science  comes  out  of  it,  viz.,  from  the  love  of  science, 
and  even  in  this  way  it  embraces  all  we  know  of 
nature  ;  it  is  love  that  knows  it ;  for  take  away  the 
love  of  science,  and  the  knowledge  of  nature  goes 
out,  as  taking  away  the  sun  would  wither  the  skies. 
In  the  third  place,  the  little  beginnings,  the  new 
atoms  in  the  lower  sphere,  are  always  the  inheritors  of 
the  Avhole  of  the  coming  sphere.  If  men  or  races  of  a 
greater  order  are  born,  the  inhabited  world  must  perish 
with  them,  or  they  will  be  the  only  races  extant  and 
take  possession  of  the  world  in  time.  These  mount- 
ing increments  point  upwards.  Life  here,  embedded 
in  nature,  existing  in  apparently  small  quantities 
like  nuggets  in  rocks,  the  good  rude  rocks  being  in- 
cluded in  God's  final  causes  for   nugfcret-mouldinof. 


136  CORRESPONDENCES:  LOVE, 

points  with  all  five  fingers  to  a  realm  where  life  is 
not  in  nature,  but  exists  in  worlds  which  are  its  repre- 
sentatives and  correspondences,  and  which  are  more 
alive  than  the  brain  with  the  mind  in  it  is  alive  ; 
being    the     constantly    produced    and    everlastmg 
thoughts  and  affections  poured  by  God  through  His 
peopTe  there,  and  constituting  a  spiritual  world,  as  firm 
as  heavenly  virtue,  and  as  safe  as  eternity.      That 
world  is  indicated  by  every  tiny  form  of  life  here  ; 
and  will  give  future  science  the  right  to  correlate  our 
poor  love  and  dim  wisdom  with  the  vortices  of  heat 
and  light  in  solar  systems.     To  just  science  they  are 
sufficient  specimens  of  the  beginnings  of  that  corre- 
lation.    Heat  and  light,  studied  in  this  view,  make 
our  main  faculties  more  conscious  of  their  own  inward 
nature ;  while  they  are  self-evidenced  at  the  centre  as 
human  heat  or  love,  and  conscious  light  or  wisdom. 


XXXVI. 

CORRESPONDENCES  :    LOVK,  THEIR  POINT  OF  DEPARTURE. 

In  this  direction,  of  correspondences,  commencing 
from  the  known,  lies  the  scientific  education  of  the 
people  of  the  whole  world ;  for  the  heart  is  head 
master  in  the  school,  and  the  perceptions  of  the 
mind  are  under  it ;  and  the  truths  of  nature,  as 
they  are  learnt,  will  have  the  better  genius  of  the 
pupils  over  them  continually,  recognizing  them  as 
representations  of  self-evident  life  in  all  details  of 
life  human  and  divine.  The  true  imagination  and 
ineffaceable  memory  of  science  will  be  born  in  those 

new  times. 

Modern  science  has   been   In   a  hurry  with   its 


THEIR  POINT  OF  DEPARTURE. 


137 


correlations,  and  is  invalid  because  it  has  left  the 
spiritual  realm  out  of  view,  as  though  mind  and  life 
were  mere  words,  and  heat  and  light  and  electricity 
and  magnetism  were  well-known  substantial  facts  in 
comparison.  Yet  the  truth  is  that  the  latter  things 
are  unknown,  and  in  themselves  unknowable,  except 
as  phenomena,  or  as  correspondences ;  while  the 
mind  and  the  life  actually  mean  self-knowledge  and 
substantial  love.  Hurry  in  generalizing  without 
these  is  to  be  ascribed  to  a  temporal  ambition  that 
is  no  part  of  the  patient  life  of  true  science,  which  is 
the  ass  that  can  carry  its  redeemer. 

A  word  at  present  out  of  science  has  been 
frequently  used  above,  the  word  Love ;  it  may  be 
necessary  to  explain  that  it  does  not  imply  only 
those  outward  aftections  which  are  commonly  ex- 
pressed by  it  in  speech,  but  the  radical  affections 
of  mankind,  directed  to  whatever  objects,  as  the  love 
of  life,  the  love  of  power,  the  love  of  knowledge,  the 
love  of  whatever  things,  visible  or  invisible,  con- 
stitute the  motives  of  the  man,  and  without  which 
love  he  would  be  as  a  stock  and  a  stone.  This  is  the 
foundation  of  his  whole  mind ;  and  his  intelligence 
is  nothing  but  the  organized  way  of  it.  The 
philosophies  of  the  world  do  not  recognise  this,  and 
put  mental  faculties  in  the  first  place,  whereas  these 
depend  for  their  substance  and  existence  upon 
affections,  or  organic  derivations  of  love,  arteries 
from  the  heart  of  love,  within  them  or  above  them. 
It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  this  meaning  and 
position  of  love,  or  otherwise  it  cannot  be  seen  as 
the  universal  substance  of  all  souls  and  all  intellects, 
and  the  first  known  term  of  all  correspondences. 
Without  this  love  recognised  in  God, — God  is  Love, 
— there  is  no  order  but  that  of  temporal  phenomena 


138  CORRESPONDENCES:  LOVE, 

in  the  natural  world ;  the  whole  system  is  a  vast 
dead  body  breeding  life  by  contingencies  of  decay ; 
men  and  women  are  the  maggots  of  the  atheistic 
corpse;   and  science  is  a  perpetual  funeral  whicli 
never  succeeds  in  burying  out  of  the  sight  of  the 
common  unperverted  heart  the  death  at  the  centre  ; 
diffusing  woe  instead  of  a  joyful  existence  in  God. 
Of  suclf  science  it  is  said,  ''  The  horses  of  Egypt  are 
horses  of  flesh,  not  of  spirit."     Egypt,  as  before,  is 
science ;  horses  are  the  understandings  of  what  is 
true  ;  horses  of  flesh  are  carnal  understandings  from 
lusts  of  knowing  by  wrong  ways,  by  violations  of 
life,  for  example  ;  they  are  not  of  spirit ;  there  is  no 
respiration  in  them  carrying  life  and  thought  from 
the  Holy  One  through  all  the  parts  of  the  scientific 
man;    they  are  Egyptian  idols  of  self,   and  they 

cannot  breathe. 

All  such  science  is  doomed  ;  like  a  pillar  of  salt  hi 
the  sea,  it  will  be  washed  away  and  perish.     It  is  in 
the  dearest  interests  of  all  good  men  and  women  that 
it  should  disappear.     It  is  not  the  ^^reign  of  law," 
but  the  cause  and  chronicle  of  anarchy.    Not  a  stone 
or  a  crystal,  robbed  of  its  reasons,  that  does  not  cry 
against  it.     Plants  and  trees  and  cruelly  entreated 
beasts  abhor  it.     The  final  paradox,  it  is  a  vacuum 
full  of  self.     There  are  many  forecasts  of  its  ex- 
tinction.    As  was  hinted  before,  the  pressing  ques- 
tion of  the  education  of  the  people  leads  directly  to 
an  Index  Expurgatorms  of  books  and  subjects  unfit 
for  youthful  minds.    Topics  that  happen  to  be  charged 
with    atheism    and    materialism    are   like   diseased 
meat,  that  cannot  be  allowed  by  the  community. 
Clearly  such    branches    require   to    be    forbidden. 
Otherwise  they  will  breed  and  aggravate  all  social 
diseases.      There  is  not  an  educational  institution  in 


THEIR  POINT  OF  DEPARTURE. 


139 


the  country  that  would  not  be  poisoned  rapidly,  as 
it  were  with  typhoid  germs,  if  the  spirit  and  doctrines 
of  recent  utterances  at  tlie  British  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science  could  be  communicated 
in  its  teachings.  The  chaplains  of  every  prison,  if 
the  germs  could  leak  in  there,  would  find  criminals 
comforting  themselves  under  the  avowed  godlessness 
of  their  betters.  Every  reformatory  would  be  less 
manageable  from  insane  license  of  thought  com- 
municating with  former  habits,  and  provoking  to 
fresh  license  of  life.  It  would  be  in  vain  to  instil 
motives  into  the  young  inmates  where  the  motives 
are  only  expediencies  made  out  of  matter  by  the 
teacher  himself,  being,  in  fact,  his  own  typhoid 
exuviae  filtered  through  expediency  again  :  the  only 
motives  left  would  be  punishments  and  tyranny  in- 
creasing in  scale.  All  schools,  for  boys  are  very 
metaphysical,  would  be  corrupted  by  scoffers  from 
above  downwards,  and  religion  would  be  a  jest  from 
the  beginning  of  life.  These  are  indubitable  conse- 
quences of  the  proclamation  of  materialism  from  the 
visible  high  places  of  science  in  the  land.  And  if 
the  land  is  not  going  downwards  the  evil  will  have 
to  be  met,  and  this  can  only  be  done  by  public  action 
against  its  sources.  It  is  a  question  of  the  sound- 
ness of  the  nation's  heart,  and  of  the  strenofth  of  its 
faith  in  the  Lord.  Many  ardent  educators  belong, 
indeed,  to  the  bands  of  atheism ;  but  the  New 
Church,  working  through  all  the  churches,  Avill 
confront  them  in  their  passage  to  the  schools.  As 
yet  this  is  only  a  tendency,  but  the  more  the  evil  is 
seen  the  more  clear  the  action  against  it  will  be- 
come, in  order  that  education  may  be  saved. 


J 


I40      PUBLIC  LIMITATIONS  OF  SCIENTISM. 


XXXVII. 


PUBLIC    LIMITATIONS    OF    SCIENTISM. 

If  false  science  will  be  cast  out  of  education,  as  it 
must  be,  it  will  also  be  checked  in  Eoyal  Associations 
themselves  in  a  country  which  still  has  the  Bible. 
That  will  in  part  depend  upon  the  audiences,  and  as 
they  gather  courage,  and  call  to  mind  the  purport  oF 
true  science,  they  will  resist  subtle  teachings  which 
have  nothing  to  do  with  human  knowledge,  and  at 
once  insist  on  the  previous    question.      They  will 
want  no  professor  s  opinions  about  matter  and  proto- 
plasm as  God's  equivalents,  but  will  require  his  facts 
from  his  own  material  workshop  :  to  those  facts  they 
will  tie  him  down,  or  not  hear  him.     A  little  more 
life  in  this  England,  a  little  more  fire  from  the  Lord 
Christ,  and  the  annual  gatherings  of  these  assemblies 
will  be  too  hot  with  religious  war  ;  they  will  have  to 
eschew  from  motives  of  preservation  the  causes  of 
it ;  hymns  as  of  Exeter  Hall  will  spring  up  in  their 
midst,  and  the  voice  of  atheism  be  drowned.     There 
will  then  be  the  same  reason  for  forbidding  by  law 
the   public   proclamation   of    these    doctrines   that 
there  is  for  preventing  Roman  Catholic  processions 
in  the  streets— the  reason  of  public   safety.      No 
freedom   is   infringed    here.      But  if,  in  a   hall   of 
science,  convened  for  its  ends,  the  public  conscience 
is  attacked  publicly  or  covertly,  the  public  religion 
is  challenged  thereby,  and  combat  will  ensue.     If  it 
is  not  to  ensue,  the  subject  there  on  both  sides  must 
be  forbidden.      At  the  same  time,  the  atheists  on 
their  platform  have  full  right  to  speak,  but  at  an 
association  for   the  promotion  of  atheism  and  the 


PUBLIC  LIMITATIONS  OF  SCIENTISM,       141 

cultus  of  protoplasm.  No  man  who  knows  what  he 
is  about  to  hear,  and  who  is  admitted  with  an 
atheist  ticket,  will  be  likely  to  cause  disturbance  in 
his  own  band.     There  for  the  present  let  liim  be. 

This  then  is  another  way  in  which  false  science 
will  meet  its  doom,  by  the  confusion  of  its  assem- 
blies, and  their  closure  by  the  police  in  the  interests 
of  peaceful  citizenship.  A  third  stroke  will  fall 
upon  evil  and  false  science  from  the  power  of  Parlia- 
ment. As  atheism  has  called  up  the  New  Church 
and  its  religion  by  a  challenge,  so  cruelty  summons 
forth  humanity  wherever  it  abides,  and  here  viola- 
tion of  animal  life  will  mount  its  scaffold.  It  Avill 
be  forbidden  by  penal  laws.  Besides  social  degra- 
dation, corporal  punishment  is  the  one  thing  left  to 
teach  feeling  to  future  violators,  who  will  thus  learn 
the  most  important  truths  of  sensation,  and  of  the 
functions  of  nerve  and  muscle,  in  their  own  bodies. 
They  will  learn  the  functions  of  pain,  which,  in  their 
enormities,  are  the  only  verities  they  have  had  an 
opportunity  of  acquiring  from  the  torture  of  God  s 
creatures,  but  which  they  have  carefully  omitted  to 
learn.  They  will  learn  tenderly  how  to  avoid  pains 
by  ceasing  to  inflict  them  upon  others.  The  laws 
which  will  teach  them  this  are  of  course  not  retro- 
spective. Violators  who  repent,  or  at  least  cease 
from  the  actual  practice  of  wickedness,  will  be  left 
to  their  own  consciences,  and  to  the  judgment  of  their 
deathbeds,  but  law,  and  a  merciful  society,  will 
forget  the  past.  The  books,  however,  which  record 
their  deeds,  and  teach  young  men  to  repeat  and  vary 
them  by  their  own  firesides,  the  ''Companions  to 
the  Laboratory  "  will  be  confiscated  and  destroyed. 
They  have  added  a  new  world  to  atrocity,  and  an 
immeasurable  volume  to  obscenity ;  and  no  Parlia- 


n 


142      PUBLIC  LIMITATIONS  OF  SCIENTIST 

ment  that  considers  the  ease  can  prosecute  vile 
publications  without  taking  prime  action  against 
thino-s  to  which  the  claws  of  common  lusts  are  tame. 
The'^stench  of  this  printed  bloodguiltiness  must  be 

burnt  out  of  the  land. 

Perhaps  the  case  seems  exaggerated ;  and  it  may 
appear  on  a  superficial  view  that  this  violation  of 
livinc.  animals  all  over  the  civilized  world,  to  please 
men  s  wishes,  is  too  small  a  cause  to  determine  the 
instability  of  certain  sciences,  and  to  affect  the 
position  and  public  life  of  all  science  whatever.  The 
answer  is  that  we  have  here  a  most  violent  disease 
in  science  itself,  and  in  the  society  which  tolerates 
it,  a  disease  of  the  heart ;  and  such  a  malady  it  is 
obvious  threatens  life;  and  though  it  may  be  but  a 
valve  wrong,  a  mixing  of  bloods  that  ought  not  to 
be  mixed,  yet  for  such  a  body,  thus  confused  at  the 
centre,  there  is  only  one  end,  and  that  is  extinction. 
Nor  wonder;  for  besides  the  apparently  local  break, 
that  wrong  valve  and  its  puddle  of  blood  run  through 
every  drop  and  influence  every  fibre  of  the  scientific 
man,  and  prepare  him  and  his  society  not  only  for 
special  but  for  general  dissolution. 

The  rights  of  such  science,  as  commonly  pleaded, 
clearly  bring  it  into  conflict  with  Parliament  and 
civil  allegiance.  If  a  man  can  practise  abominations 
because  he  wants  badly  to  know  something,  if  he 
alleges  ^'scientise  sacra  fames"  as  a  sufficient  ground, 
he  is  an  ultramontane  materialist,  who  takes  secret  in- 
structions to  do  evil  which  he  likes  without  regard 
being  had  to  the  conscience  of  the  country  embodied 
in  itl  laws.  Those  rights  denied,  the  legal  status 
once  disallowed,  courts  of  law  will  settle  the  rest,  and 
that  great  potentate  foreign  to  true  science,  the  good 


THE  TRUTHS  OF  EXAMPLE.  143 

pleasure  of  the  selfhood,  will  sink  into  cruelty-felony 
wherever  its  dictates  are  received  and  acted  upon. 

These  statements  are  then  not  exaggerated  ;  but 
record  the  fact,  that  any  one  so  great  enoi^ity 
publicly  condoned  threatens  all  virtue.  And  so 
the  life  of  the  nation  must  go  to  war  with  it  and 
cast  it  out. 

Nota  hene,~-T\\e  truths  of  example,  the  truths  of 
good  and  bad  influence,  are  at  present  but  slenderly 
visible  to  the  world.  The  truths  about  compulsion 
are  more  material,  and  better  known.  There  is  a 
passage  in  Troilus  and  Cressida,  where  the  question 
is  of  bringing  Achilles  to  the  front  to  meet  Hector 
before  Troy ;  and  Nestor  the  Wise  says,  anticipatino- 
the  issue  : —  ^ 

''  For  the  success. 
Although  particular,  shall  give  a  scantling 
Of  good  or  bad  unto  the  general ; 
And  in  sitch  indexes,  although  small  2orichs 
To  their  subsequent  volumes,  there  is  seen 
The  hahjjigure  of  the  giant  mass 
Of  things  to  come  at  large  J' 

This  is  here  applied  to  good,  but  reaches  also  with 
a  strong  hand  to  evil.  It  manifests  how  biblically 
Shakespeare  understood  the  communications  of  man- 
kind ;  how  one  God  walking  with  us  may  redeem 
the  world;  and  one  new  rascal  or  finger  of  rascal 
may  go  far  towards  corrupting  the  human  race. 

The  truths  of  the  infection  of  example,  and  of  its 
march  and  penetration  from  private  to  public  life, 
are  a  vast  subject,  and  beyond  the  present  scope ; 
but  it  may  be  observed  that  for  the  eyes  of  am- 
bitious materialism  and  money-getting  they  almost 
disappear,  and  each  man  is  so  bent  upon  himself  that 


144 


THE  SELFHOOD, 


he  wishes  to  set  no  example,  but  to  push  on  alone  to 
the  goal  of  his  lusts.  And  hence,  although  the  rush 
of  his  successful  figure  draws  men  after  him  in  tail, 
he  is  an  unsightly  object,  to  be  hated  and  run  over, 
and  not  an  example  to  be  followed.  His  corporate 
self-love  is  for  power  for  his  class,  for  himselfs  sake, 
over  the  public,  whose  prostrate  breasts  and  necks 
constitute  the  race-ground.  This  is  eminently  seen 
in  scientism ;  and  besides  that  it  runs  through 
medical  and  surgical  practice  and  authorship,  and 
especially  through  the  connuhium  of  medicine  with 
the  state,  where  among  other  things  it  produces  the 
*^ small  prick"  of  compulsory  vaccination,  it  pours 
down  into  every  thought  about  the  human  mind  and 
body,  and  destroys  every  truth  of  example  and  in- 
fluence and  influx  in  both.  Now  the  body  of  man 
is  full  of  the  truths  of  example  ;  because  it  is  a 
hierarchy  of  upper  and  lower  organs,  in  which  the 
constant  function  of  the  upper  should  be  to  lead  the 
lower,  and  to  teach  that  all  disease  is  the  swerving 
from  the  higher  as  guides.  The  mind  also  is  full  of 
the  same  authority ;  and  its  throne  and  soundness 
lie  entirely  in  the  w^orship  of  its  divine  exemplar, 
and  in  keeping  the  sensual  selfhood  at  the  bottom, 
and  teaching  it,  by  every  weighty  faculty,  how  good 
it  is  to  be  governed  by  the  Lord.  Scientism  voids 
these  truths,  and  the  only  present  figure  in  the 
chaos  which  it  inhabits  is  its  own  struggling  self- 
hood imploring  condonation,  place,  and  recognized 
priesthood,  from  the  state. 

The,  Selfhood. — Tlie  words  self  and  selfhood  are 
frequently  used  in  these  pages ;  the  following  ex- 
planation from  Swedenborg  will  keep  the  reader  to 
the  meaning.  '^The  nature  of  self-love  shall  be 
explained  in  a  few  words ;  the  delight  of  it  exceeds 


SCIENCE  IS  DOGMATIC  AND  DOCTRINAL,     145 

every  delight  in  the  world,  for  it  is  composed  of 
mere  concupiscences  of  evils,  and  each  concupiscence 
breathes  its  delight.  Every  man  is  born  into  this 
delight,  and  inasmuch  as  it  compels  the  mind  of  man 
to  think  constantly  of  himself,  it  withholds  it  from 
thinking  of  God  and  of  his  neighbour,  except  from 
himself  and  concerning  himself;  wherefore  if  God 
does  not  favour  his  concupiscences,  he  is  angry  with 
God,  just  as  he  is  angry  with  his  neighbour  when  he 
does  not  favour  them.  This  delight,  when  it  in- 
creases, incapacitates  man  for  thinking  above  self,  or 
otherwise  than  under  self;  for  it  immerses  his  mind 
in  the  selfhood  of  his  body,  and  the  man  thence 
becomes  successively  sensual ;  and  a  sensual  man 
speaks  in  a  high  and  lofty  tone  about  matters  of  a 
worldly  and  civil  nature,  but  of  God  and  divine 
things  he  can  speak  only  from  the  memory.  If  he 
is  a  person  engaged  in  civil  matters,  he  acknowledges 
that  the  world  was  created  by  nature,  and  that  it  is 
governed  by  self-derived  prudence,  and  he  denies  a 
God.  If  he  is  a  priest,  he  speaks  of  God  and  divine 
things  from  the  memory,  yet  in  a  high  and  lofty 
tone,  but  in  his  heart  he  has  little  belief  in  them  " 
[Apocalypse  Revealed,  n.  692).         -^^ 


XXXVIII. 


\ 


SCIENCE    IS    ESSENTIALLY    DOGMATIC    AND    DOCTRINAL. 


Science  has  seemed  so  free  because  men  have  super- 
ficially thought  that  science  has  no  dogmas.  It  has 
both  dogmas  and  doctrines.  These  exist  in  it  before 
it  ever  touches  nature.  In  this  nation  it  is  an 
inevitable  branch  from  the  Christian  Church.  Where- 


K 


146  SCIENCE  IS  DOGMATIC  AND  DOCTRINAL. 

ever  it  has  existed  it  is  a  branch  out  of  the  con- 
science and  rehgion  of  the  time  and  country.     Till 
now   "thou   shalt"   and    "thou    shalt    not"    have 
always  been  pleadable  over  its   transactions.      Its 
escape  from  these  conditions  cannot  be  permitted. 
"  Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  others  should  do 
unto  you,"  is  a  fundamental  dogma  over  the  practices 
of  science.    The  existence  of  God,  and  the  revelation 
of  Him,  without  which  every  dogma  is  inept  and 
inoperative ;  the  amenability  of  conscience  to  God, 
and  thus  the  sovereignty  of  conscience  ;  the  immor- 
tality of  man,    and  the  dependence  of   his  future 
life  upon  the  deeds  done  in  the  bodj^ ;  the  conserva- 
tion of  society  in  mercy  and  truth,  and  thus  in  the 
divine   order ;    the   good    of    eliciting   truths   that 
shall  educate  and  not  contaminate  little  children  and 
young  persons  and  simple  minds  ;  the  necessity  of 
feeding   the   heart   of  professions   with    lessons    of 
humanity  where  they  are  most  needed  ;  in  short,  the 
discipline  of  love  to  God  and  man,  and  the  creatures, 
now  and  hereafter, — all  these  embodied  in  intellec- 
tual statements,  are  doctrines  of  practice  in  which 
alone  science  can  live  and  move  and  have  its  being. 
It  is  circumpressed  by  them  into  the  goodly  globe 
of  truth.     In  this  globe  all  the  sciences  are  solid  uses. 
They  know  what  they  begin  from,  and  what  they 
end  in  ;  again,  "  the  glory  of  God,   and  the  good 
of  man's  estate." 

Inwardly,  then,  science  is  essentially  dogmatic  and 
doctrinal :  it  is  saved  the  trouble  of  inventing  its 
own  soul,  by  receiving  a  soul  of  good  from  the 
Almighty.  He  opens  into  it  by  a  secret  way  and 
directs  its  thoughts.  It  becomes  alive,  and  the 
reflex  of  life  is  seen  in  the  mirror  of  the  bodily 
organs.      As   Newton's  apple  was  entered  by  the 


DOCTRINES  PRESSING  UPON  SCIENCE.      147 

universe,  and  became  the  apple  of  vision  of  the  solar 
system,  so  the  facts  of  anatomy  are  entered  by  their 
greater  circumambient  lives,  and  the  organs  become 
visible  in  their  functions  as  expressions  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul,  and  symbols  of  humanity.  The  body  is 
transparent,  and  only  requires  more  and  more  good 
heart  and  soul  to  see  through  it.  Christian  doctrine, 
once  set  in  the  right  direction,  is  the  single  eye  for 
all  the  scientific  vision  that  can  be  given  for  the  ends 
of  man's  spiritual  use. 


XXXIX. 

DOCTRINES    PRESSING    UPON    SCIENCE  :    A    NEW    RELIGION 

CLAIMS    IT. 


What  does  Christian  doctrine  belong  to  now  ? 
It  is  truth  unapplied  in  the  sciences  ;  it  is  wine 
kept  in  the  vaults  of  the  churches.  It  has  no  pub- 
lic statement  of  commanding  duties  for  the  daily  life 
of  investigators.  It  is  God's  will-force  denied  or 
uncorrelated  in  the  scientific  mind.  Men  have  for- 
gotten its  record.  It  belongs  then,  it  must  be 
affirmed,  to  the  well-kept  silence  and  secrecy  of  the 
New  Jerusalem,  where  it  is  guarded  for  a  time  ; 
guarded  away  in  the  very  scorn  which  like  Herod 
would  destroy  its  young  life.  The  words  New 
Jerusalem  have  been  used  before  :  to  open  silence 
a  little,  what  do  they  imply  ?  They  imply  a  new 
church,  neither  Protestant  nor  Catholic,  but  capable 
of  entering  into  all  churches  and  all  denominations 
which  are  willing  to  receive  it,  and  of  gently  re- 
volutionizing them  by  love,  and  reanimating  them. 
They  imply  the  regeneration  of  ordinary  life  as  the 


148     DOCTRINES  PRESSING   UPON  SCIENCE: 

one  condition  of  seeing  truth,  without  which  condition 
the  scientific  mind  has  none  but  superficial  paths  open 
to  it.      This  regeneration   depends   upon   personal 
obedience  to  the  revelation  of  the  personal  Lord,  of 
Him  who  was  Jesus  Christ  on  earth.     Shunning 
evil  as  sins  against  Him,  and  then  doing  good  as 
from  ourselves,  but  intimately  acknowledging  that  it 
is  from  Him.     Not  conversion  only,  which  is  but 
a  spiritual  attitude  of   the  man,   but    regeneration 
which  is  a  daily  way  and  continual  combat.     Belief 
in  the  Divine  Word  is  concurrent  with  this  regene- 
ration,   which   lives   from    the  Word;    that  Word 
being  the  name  of  tlie  Lord,  and  all  we  know  of 
Him.     Belief  in    the    spirit   within  the  letter;  in 
the  spiritual  sense  which  is  the  life  of  the  Word, 
and  which  has  been  opened  in  these    latter    days. 
Belief   in    the    spiritual   world,   the  knowledge    of 
which,    definite    yet   immense,  has  been  also  com- 
municated through  the  divine  rational  illumination 
of  Swedenborg.      Especially  belief  in  the  redemp- 
tion of  man  through  the  incarnation,   which  is  the 
crowning  doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  :  Jehovah 
in  a  daily  life  in  the  flesh  which  he  assumed,  beating 
down  hell  in  a  human  character,  and  thus  making 
a  humanity  divine,  which  is  henceforth  the  object  of 
true    worship    for   all    creatures.      A    redemption 
which  can  save  no  man  without  a  good  life  of  his 
own  free  choice,  but  in  which  salvation  is  made  pos- 
sible for  all  who  will.      Freewill  is  the  ground  of  it  in 
us,  and  rationality  showing  hourly  evil  to  be  refused 
and  avoided,  and  good  to  be  done  ;  the  good  being 
attributed    by   the   same   rationality  to   the    Lord 

alone. 

The  Lord  in  second  advent  has  come  in  this  way 
throuo"h  a  special  illumination   of  a  human  mind, 


A  NEW  RELIGION  CLAIMS  IT, 


149 


showing  clearly,  yea  scientifically,  what  he  was  and 
did  when  he  was  in  Judea  eighteen  centuries  since. 
He  has   opened  the  hand  of  his  divine  conditions. 
He   will  possess   all.       Not  ecclesiastical  churches 
only,  for    they  are  at  the  best    the  small  needful 
spires  of  life  ;  but  the  whole  breadth  of  man  in  his 
multitudes.     Not  religious  rites  only  ;  but  the  daily 
life.     For  every  man  is  a  church  if  he  is  leadii^  a 
good  life  from  the  Lord's  motives.     Therefore  He  is 
going,  at  first  through  chosen  men,  his  men  of  war, 
with  new  consciences,  to  possess  himself  of  all  busi- 
nesses and  affairs,  of  democracies  and  aristocracies, 
of  parliaments  and  potentates,  of  states  and  nations, 
and  of  public  faculties  of  the  mind  ;  and  to  open  His 
Divine  Humanity  into  them  and  upon  them,  and  so 
to  judge  them ;  so  that  power,  property  and  know- 
ledge shall  stand  at  the  bar,  and  be  reckoned  for 
good  or  evil.     This  is  the  coming  of  the  New  Jeru- 
salem ;  the  second  coming  of  the  Lord.      It  is  not 
mystical.      Whatever   good   administration   of  the 
daily  life  from  the  Lord's  motives  is  effected,  is  a 
descent   of  some   portion   of  the   new  city.      The 
obeisance  of  great  proprietors  to  good  for  His  sake, 
their  cessation  from  artful  luxury,  and  the  use  of 
their  money  for  the  public  weal,  taking  their  own  ducal 
salary  out  of  it  with  the  intelligent  and  economical 
hand  of  conscience,  is  so  far,  according  to  the  wisdom 
and  love  involved,  a  distinct  planting  of  the  New 
Jerusalem  in  wealth  and  its  motives.      The  acknow- 
ledgment of  power  and  position  as  the  Lord's  engines 
in  man,  and  the  use  of  both  for  help  in  public  re- 
generation, is  another  and  a  further  descent  of  the 
divine  doctrines  and  principles.     It  cannot  be  that 
science  is  untouched,  and  occupies  no  relations  to  the 


I 


150  THE  INCARNATION  CLAIMS  THE  SCIENCES. 

greatest  spiritual  revolution  that  has  yet  taken  place 
over  the  earth  of  man. 

It  is  marvellous  to  think  that  churches  and  states 
have  not  expected  this  thing,  but  still  look  to  a  per- 
fected Protestantism,  or  a  triumphant  Catholicism, 
as  the  crown  of  God  on  the  head  of  human  society, 

marvellous,  for  it  is  written  down  in  language  that 

may  be  sufficiently  understood,  that  the  New  Jeru- 
salem, with  all  things  made  new,  is  to  descend  out 
of  heaven  from  God.  The  images  of  the  Apocalypse 
carry  no  promise  of  the  finality  of  the  present 
ecclesiasticisms.  The  revolution  itself  has  come,  and 
all  our  lives,  secular  and  religious,  in  their  breadth, 
depth,  and  height,  are  face  to  face  with  it. 


XL. 

THE    INCARNATION    CLAIMS    THE    SCIENCES    ON   THEIR 

OWN    GROUNDS. 

Primarily  now  so  is  science.      The  fact  of  the 
incarnation  of  Jehovah  in  the  Lord  confronts  science 
on  its  upward  way.     Science  pushes  its  horns  from 
matter  to  spirit,  and  would  kill  what  it  cannot  com- 
prehend.    But  a  revealed  science  has  a  horn  which 
cannot  be  passed  by  the  natural  power.     It  can  kill 
any  natural  science,  but  itself  is  beyond  attack.     It 
opens  into  all  sciences  because  it  is  science  with 
divine   right.      It   is  recorded  in   the   Word,  and 
stands  firm  in  history.      It  is  a  natural  fact,  and  a 
subject  of  natural  knowledge,  which,  as  regeneration 
advances,  is  converted  by  the  descending  Word  into 
spiritual   natural   knowledge.     It   is   not  mystical, 
but  divinely  rational ;  for  the  reasons  for  the  birth 


THE  INCARNATION  CLAIMS  THE  SCIENCES  151 

of  Jesus  Christ,  with  the  soul,  Jehovah,  indwelling, 
are  more  patent  than  the  reasons  for  the  birth  of  any 
ordinary  man,  whose  existence  may  be  a  problem  to 
account  for  ;  whereas  the  plain  reason  in  the  Lord's 
case  is  the  redemption  of  all  men.     Seen  from  this 
point  of  view,  the  facts  too,  not  only  of  the  birth, 
but  of  the  life,  and  the  death,  and  the  resurrection, 
are  divinely  rational  and  divinely  natural.      Were 
it  possible  that  a  similar  being  could  arise  again, 
what  is  called  miracle  must  flow  from  his  origination 
as  in  the  Gospels.    From  above  He  instituted  a  new 
creation  of  men,  at  whose  hearts  or  wills  He  will 
knock,  and  if  they  open,  His  divine  personality  is  in 
them  and  with  them.     It  is  not  there  mystically,  but 
if  men  shun  what  He  hates.  He  will  consciously  be 
in  them,  and  then  he  will  empower  them  to  do  what 
He  loves,  and  put  selfhood  down,  leaving  it  as  a 
natural  patch  of  ground  to  stand  on.     And  when 
they  are  thus  capacitated  to  do  His  will,  and  walk 
in  His  way,  the  New  Jerusalem  will  be  a  conscious 
society  of  His  creating,  as  the  solar  systems  and  the 
kingdoms  of  nature  are  of  His  creating ;  mankind 
unviolated,  being  the  wiUing,  rational  vehicle  of  it 
all.     The  laws  which  reign  in  heaven,  which  con- 
sist of  no  mystical  elements,  but  of  the   men   and 
women  who  have  died  in  the  Lord,  and  of  all  chil- 
dren, will  then  reach  down  into  home  and  mart ;  and 
that  is  the  New  Jerusalem. 

In  saying  that  none  of  this  is  mystical,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  origin  and  consequences  of  these  new 
states  are  stupendous,  and  refuse  all  forecast  save 
that  which  is  given  in  the  Word  ;  but  the  meaning 
is  that  there  are  no  elements  which  require  the 
best  faculties  of  the  mind  to  be  put  aside  in  order  to 
a  reception  of  these  truths.     Science  can  accompany 


i 


1 


152  THE  INCARNATION  CLAIMS  THE  SCIENCES. 

with  reverence  every  ftict  of  the  incarnation,  and 
reason  be  employed  upon  the  same.  The  Word 
loves  true  sciences  and  just  reasons.  It  was  because 
Swedenborg  was  correspondentially  a  fisherman,  or 
lover  of  natural  truths,  that  he  became  with  his  free 
iViculties  a  spiritual  fisherman,  to  whom  these  spiri- 
tual truths  were  made  known.  He  was  thus  the 
chosen  instrument  to  inaugurate  the  reign  of  divine- 
rational  truth. 

Now  the  region  of  man  s  theological  mind  being 
inevitably  possessed  by  this  new  royalty  of  truth, 
the  Divine  Humanity,  the  present  mundane  sciences, 
with  their   lusts   and   ambitions    stimulating   them 
from   below   and   from   behind,    confront    here   no 
shadowy  theos,  or  incomprehensible  tripersonality, 
but  God-man  pleading  His  own  evidences,  in  the 
Word,  in  the  life,  in  the  consciousness  accompanying 
regeneration,  in  all  surrounding  history,  and  in  the 
analogy,  and  thus  the  attestation,  of  whatever  is  good 
and  true  and   orderly  in   the   worlds    of   man  and 
nature.      For  rightly  seen  everything  in  the  past 
leads  up  to  the  necessity,  and  therefore  to  the  neces- 
sary truth,   of  the  incarnation ;   and    the  past,  the 
present    and    the    future    descend    into   the    New 
Jerusalem,  which  is  the  second  or  spiritual  coming  of 
the  same  God-man,  the  Lord. 

The  waves  of  atheism  may  and  will  roll  in 
breakers  of  angry  fire  against  this  new  rock,  but 
it  is  a  rational  rock,  a  scientific  rock,  a  most  defined 
rock  ;  and  here  is  the  point,  that  it  is  a  true  Peter, 
an  active,  aggressive,  living,  human  rock,  and  the 
river  of  the  Word  that  flows  and  will  flow  from  it  is 
incessant  and  never  ending.  All  foul  sciences  and 
violations  will  die  of  it.  Materialism  and  atheism 
will  be  tired  and  worn  away  by  its  endless  and  in- 


THE  INCARNATION  CLAIMS  THE  SCIENCES  153 

undating  assertion  of  its  truths.  It  will  open  its 
mouth  in  its  church,  and  swallow  their  floods  as  of 
no  account.  The  assemblies  that  have  marched  the 
bands  of  irreligion  against  its  frontier,  will  be  over- 
borne from  their  own  midst,  and  beg  truce  of  the 
invasion  of  its  armed  and  immitigable  lights.  In 
fine,  the  new  science  of  the  Lord  in  the  Word,  will 
press  the  old  atheism  until  its  provocations  cease, 
and  it  becomes  a  secret  watchword  first,  and  then  a 
cavern  in  the  ground. 

As  love,  and  giving  true  delights  away,  are  inti- 
mate in  God,  so  hatred  is  the  entrail  of  atheism, 
and  cruelty  is  its  hand.  Against  this,  the  Divine 
Humanity  opens  into  evil  science.  The  foregoing 
pages  were  begun  mainly  to  protest  against  scientific 
violation  of  hfe.  The  Divine  Man,  who  first  made 
men,  and  then  becoming  a  man  redeemed  His  fellow- 
creatures,  and  thereby  the  groaning  and  travailing 
creation,  meets  science  in  her  Association,  and  gives 
her  idiocy  for  her  deathright.  By  unnatural  inter- 
course with  beasts,  how  shall  she  scale  the  heights 
of  possible  knowledge,  when  the  divine  love  and 
mercy  and  purity  are  those  heights  ?  when  these 
qualities  are  inmostly  the  life  of  every  beast  and 
blade  upon  the  surface  of  the  ground?  when  the 
only  rational  scientific  question  is,  what  God  made 
each  creature  for,  and  how  does  its  make  carry  His 
design  ?  To  violate  mercy  is  to  murder  science  ;  to 
prolong  and  enjoy  the  violation,  is  to  live  in  hell 
upon  earth.  To  expect  truth  by  this  way  is  to  enter 
the  madhouse  of  wickedness.  The  Divine  Humanity, 
the  Lord  rationally  known,  cannot  but  carry  this 
doom  into  the  heart  of  every  impenitent  science. 

From  cruelty  issues  cruelty,  and  the  love  of  tor- 
turino"  our  fellow-creatures  here,  the  animal  tribes, 


i' 


154    THE  INCARNATION  CLAIMS  THE  SCIENCES. 

proceeds  from  its  own  hell  upwards  into  the  love  of 
torturing  our  own  race.      The  British  Association 
tolerates  this  torture,  and  lends  itself  as  a  Coliseum 
to  the  exhibition  of  it.     The  Christians  here  are 
again  in  the  arena,  but  on  a  greater  scale  than  when 
Kome  had  emperors.     All  little  children  and  young 
persons,  all  the  simple-minded  who  are  taught  their 
Bibles,  and  love  their  Bibles,  the  weak,  the  sick 
and  the  dying,  the  bride  and  bridegroom  seeking  to 
enter  into  eternal  vows,  all  who  want  the  Lord  to 
live  from,  all  who  through  His  hope  alone  do  not 
despair,  all  who  are  fallen  and  look  to  rise,  the  mild 
and  merciful  who  are  downtrodden  here,  those  who 
labour  and  are  heavy  laden,  all  these  are  in  the 
arena,  and  atheism  would  bring  them  in  by  batches 
that  the  life  of  life  may  be  torn  from  them  by  en- 
furiated  materiaUsms  which  enjoy  the  feast.     The 
nation  is  the  victim  upon  which  the  education  of 
destruction  is  to  take  effect.     Now  the  point  is,  that 
the  Divine  Humanity,  treated  as  a  common  child, 
has  been  challenged  in  the   arena  by  the  atheists 
themselves,  and  His  voice,  ''  suffer  little  children  to 
come  unto  me  "  and  I  will  educate  them,  is  heard 
in  whispers  first  in  some  consciences.     No  matter 
what  the  arena  of  the  science,  or  what  the  confi- 
dent expectation  of  professors  that   the  truths  of 
religion  are  their  prey,  and  that  Ave,  Scientia,  Im- 
perator,  morituri  te  sahitant,  will  be  heard  from  the 
old  Gospels  :  another  issue  is  at  hand.    The  Coliseum, 
the  British  Association,  is  before  the  judgment  bar 
of  this   nation   instinct  with   the  spirit  of  a  new 
religion,  creating  a  new  age.     The  children  will  be 
saved.     The  sport  of  destroying  human  minds,  and 
of  hunting  faiths  and  charities  to  death,  depends 
upon  the  sufferance  of  heaven,  and  this  is  reflected  in 


THE  DIVINE  HUMANITY, 


155 


the  sufferance  of  the  people.  That  sufferance  will 
not  be  extended  to  it.  The  sanctity  of  childhood, 
and  the  safety  of  education,  proceed  now  from  Him 
who  was  born  as  a  little  child  ;  and  thence  ascended 
until  he  became  King  of  Kings  and  Lord  of  Lords. 
The  nation  will  discover  as  soon  as  it  pleases,  that 
this  presses  close  on  certain  knowledge,  and  is  in  full 
panoply  a  man  of  war,  in  the  sciences  themselves. 

''  Unto  us  a  Child  is  born,  unto  us  a  Son  is  given, 
and  His  name  shall  be  called  Wonderful,  Counsellor, 
the  mighty  God,  the  Father  of  eternity,  the  Prince 
of  Peace." 

avLi, 

THE    DIVINE    HUMANITY. 

This  is  the  cause  now  pleaded,  and  to  be  pleaded 
as  against  the  natural  atheism  of  the  human  mind  ; 
for  observe,  this  is  the  cause  of  natural  religion; 
since  there  can  be  no  natural  religion  without  a 
natural  God,  or  in  other  words,  a  divine  natural  man. 
In  Jehovah  the  world  had  supernatural  religion, 
which  in  power  was  not  ultimate  enough  to  keep 
even  the  Jews  under  the  just  government  of  heaven. 
In  the  Lord,  Jehovah  in  the  flesh,  the  last  degree  of 
power  is  assumed,  and  natural  religion  is  born,  not 
the  less  but  the  more  natural  in  that  it  is  divine- 
natural.  Being  a  fact,  this  confronts  every  science, 
and  commands  all  speculation.  By  its  own  body 
and  pressure,  it  has  a  right  to  be  represented  in 
every  assembly  which  discourses  about  the  essence 
of  the  natural  world.  It  can  produce  armies  of 
rejoinders  to  all  invasion  of  its  own  precincts,  and 
put  forward  the  Word  of  God,  now  opened  from  its 


^') 


r. 


156         POSITIVE  THEOLOGY  COMMENCES 

spirit  into  its  letter,  as  its  representative  shield 
against  the  faces  of  materialism.  What  is  required 
is  faith  working  from  love,  and  having  the  courage 
of  its  principles  and  convictions.  The  Lord  will 
assuredly  help  it  by  His  presence  in  the  midst ;  and 
atheistical  congregations  may  be  bent  into  prayer 
for  a  beginning  of  light,  before  the  militant  influx  of 
His  power.  It  is  not  a  question  of  reasonings,  and 
will  not  be  settled  as  such  ;  but  of  divine-natural 
religion  in  the  armour  of  fact,  truth,  and  love,  press- 
ing its  opponent,  atheism,  to  the  ground,  and 
bindinof  him  there. 

XLII. 

POSITIVE  THEOLOGY  COMMENCES  IN  SWEDENBORG.       THE 

INCARNATION. 

Some  people  indeed  have  proposed,  that  theologi- 
cal time  has  passed  away,  that  it  was  an  infantine 
and  comparatively  savage  condition  of  societies,  a 
belief  in  nothings  as  the  causes  of  all  things  ;  and 
that  the  scientific  age  has  at  length  arrived,   and 
positivism  can  be  inaugurated  :  positivism  being  the 
widest  and  most  sifted  belief  in  the  informations  of 
the  five  senses,  and  in  the  laws  deducible  from  these. 
The  universality  of  these  laws  once  attained,  the 
mind  has  its  fairly  won  sceptre,  and  the  world  and  all 
it  contains  lives,  moves,  and  has  its  being  in  the 
genius  of  the  immortal  generations  of  mortal  human 
selfhoods.     But  now  it  is  pleaded  fer  contra  that 
the  theological  ages  are  not  behind  us,  but  before 
us;  that  on  the  ground  of  nature  they  are  just  be- 
ginning to  dawn;  that  the  birth  of  the  Lord  is  a 
natural   event,  and  that,   consequently,  there   is   a 


IN  SWEDENBORG.     THE  INCARNATION     157 

divine   embryology,  and   a  divine   physiology,   be- 
cause there  is  a  Divine  man.     Consequently  there  is 
a  divine  science  which  is  positive.      Not  only  posi- 
tive in  the  truths  it  holds,    but  positive,  warring 
positive,  from  the  love  of  salvation.     Yet  it  is  all 
compact  of  intellectual  truth,    and  from   the    Re- 
deemer it  sheds  natural  hght  upon  the  birth,  life, 
and  death  of  every  creature.    For  to  the  birth  of  the 
Lord  in  time,  the  whole  world  flowed  on  from  the 
beginning ;    the  fall  of  mankind,  chieftainless,  into 
ruins,  necessitated  it.     When  it  took  place,  a  human 
nature  was  taken  upon  Him  by  the  one  Divinity 
who  inhabits  eternity.    No  condition  of  actual  birth— 
a  father  and  a   mother— was   absent.     No  greater 
mystery  than  any  other  birth  attends  this  incarna- 
tion;   nay,   as     we     said    before,    lesser    mystery, 
because  there  is  a  plain  divine  reason  for  the  birth  ; 
and  in  its  very  terms  a  divine  presence  and  power 
to  cause  it.     That  birth   opened   heaven,  and   the 
rifted  sky  was  filled  with  the  host  of  angels.     The 
child  Jesus  was  a  human  character  with  the  divine 
soul  within  Him.     In  Him  there  was  nothing  inter- 
mediate between  God  and  man,  no   inheritance  of 
paternal  evils.     The  purpose  ^was  redemption.     The 
humanity  was  assumed  that  it  might  front  the  world 
in  the   world.     The   world   had  long   been   under 
expostulation  by  the  Divinity  above  the  world  ;  but 
here  it  came  for  the  first  time  face  to  face  with  the 
Divinity  in  the  world.     It  could  only  be  so  by  an 
organic   acceptance,    by   a  perfectly,   yea   divinely 
natural  fact  of  birth.     The  frame  and  character  of 
Jesus    grew,    and     His    powers    unfolded;    every 
faculty,  affection,    observation,   science,  reason,   in- 
tellect, wisdom,  expanded;    all  the  departments  of 
a  mans  character  were  there;  and  every  temptation, 


158  POSITIVE  THEOLOGY  COMMENCES 

every  ambition,  spiritual  and  temporal,  every  de- 
fleeting  terror,  assailed  the  childhood,  and  the  man- 
hood.  He  traversed  Egypt  and  Babylon,  the 
ambition  of  science,  and  the  love  of  dominion  over 
souls,  in  his  course.  He  triumphed  over  their 
motives,  and  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his 
natural  life,  converted  human  states  into  divine 
victories,  and  came  down  as  God.  By  acting  out 
the  indwelling  Jehovah,  He  gradually,  hour  by  hour, 
in  assailed  faculty  after  faculty,  became  the  Lord. 
In  the  last  struggle  of  the  humanity,  the  last  temp- 
tation to  save  the  natural  self  at  the  expense  of  the 
crucifixion,  He  destroyed  spiritual  death  by  a  natural, 
but  divinely  natural,  resistance,  and  overthrew  the 
hells  of  self  love  to  their  foundations  ;  and  then 
His  humanity  had  nothing  left  in  it  that  opposed 
His  Godhead.  They  were  naturally,  yea  divinely 
naturally  one ;  and  He  was  and  is  the  Lord.  His 
natural  body  also  was  divine  ;  His  very  flesh  was 
divine  good  and  divine  truth  ;  He  had  made  it  so 
by  no  mystical  process,  but  by  shunning  universal 
hell  w^hich  He  sensed  and  confronted,  from  His 
daily  life  ;  and  consequently,  in  the  act  of  dying  to 
the  mother's  selfhood^  the  divine  life  filled  His 
body,  and  He  rose  again.  It  is  not  a  mystery  that 
w^e  behold  here,  but  a  divine  natural  glory.  The 
mind  sees  now  that  with  the  conditions  nothing  less 
or  else  could  happen.  One  part  of  it  follows  from 
another  as  plainly  as  that  the  qualities  of  the  genera- 
tions of  men  are  handed  down  with  increments  to 
their  successors.  His  qualities  were  handed  down 
by  admitted  temptations,  combats,  and  victories,  from 
Jehovah  indwelling,  to  the  maternal  humanity,  which 
w^as  put  off  gradually  in  the  process.  And  now, 
throuc^h  the  Word,  in  His  mercy.  His  birth,  life, 


IN  SWEDE NB  OR  G.     THE  INCARNA  TION     1 5  9 

death  and  resurrection,  have  all  common  sense  as  a 
platform  in  our  minds  to  stand  upon.  They  are  the 
focal  point,  or  rather  solar  centre  of  the  natural 
sciences.  This  can  be  ignored,  and  its  sun  omitted 
out  of  the  firmament  of  knowledge  ;  but  it  cannot 
be  voided  ;  it  is  a  doctrinal  ship  set  against  the 
fleets  of  carnal  and  sensual  science,  and  with  the 
broadsides  of  heaven  in  its  charges. 

It  is  well  that  the  scientific  mind  should  ponder 
attain  and  again  that  mystery  is  absent  here  :  there 
is  mystery  in  science,  and  in  Home,  one  of  whose 
forehead-names  is  Mystery,  but  there  is  none  in  the 
incarnation.     The  subject  is  indeed  above  the  human 
mind,  until  it  is  revealed,  and  then  it  comes  fairly 
into  it ;  the  deeper  and  holier  parts  of  it  are  above, 
and  above,  and  above,  and  await  successive  reveal- 
ments  as  spiritual  use  requires  ;  but  ^'  the  thoughts 
which   are   beyond   the   reaches   of  our   souls "  at 
present — and  the  most  must  be  for  ever  beyond,  for 
the  Lord  is  infinite — are  indeed  unknown,  but  so 
seen  always  as  light,  that  it  is  plain  why  we  do  not 
know  them  ;  and  when  this  is  the  case  they  are  not 
mysterious,  although  beyond  and  above  our  faculties. 
Put  this  case  before  you  in  regard  to  the  revealed 
incarnation.     A  man  or  a  woman  inherits  a  certain 
human  character  as  a  beginning  in  life.     It  contains 
the   seeds  of  many    proclivities  to  evil.     Each  of 
these  becomes  a  point  of  temptation  in  the  life.     The 
teaching  of  parents,  the  lessons  of  the  Word  of  God, 
the  good  influences  of  society,  are  on  the  one  side  ; 
the  desires  of  the  selfhood  for  gratification  are  on 
the  other.     Truth  flows  in  and  shows  the  man  what 
his   duty   is,    shows  him  that  he  is  to  resist  the 
temptation,  and  do  against  it.     In  proportion  as  he 
does  the  truth,  he  acquires  good,  and  from  it  new 


m 


i6o  POSITIVE  THEOLOGY  COMMENCES 

truth  perceived,  and  a  new  and  higher  sense  of  duty. 
Next  this,  a  deeper  state,  is  assailed  by  temptation ; 
and  if  victory  in  resistance  is  obtained,  a  new  good, 
a  hic^her  truth,  and  a  finer  perception  result.     And 
so  forth  until  the  whole  mind  is  born  agam  or  re- 
generated, and  heavenly  motives  are  planted  in  those 
which  before  were  only  earthly  and  insurgent,  but 
are  now  subdued,  submissive,  and  the  natural  vessels 
of  human  uses  in  this  world.     Every  conscience,  nay, 
every  consciousness,  attests  to  some  experience  of 
this  fact.     Reason  and  freewill  are  the  human  agents, 
and  although  given  by  God  and  continually  sustained 
by  Him.  they  work  as  quasi  independent  powers  in 
these  conflicts,  with  all  their  light  and  with  all  their 

might. 

There  is  no  mystery  here,  but  a  wonder  that  we 

are  so  poor  in  doing  the  thing. 

Turn  now  to  the  incarnation  of  which  the  whole  ot 
this  is  an  image.     Jehovah  descended— see  Sweden- 
boro-— as  the  Divine  Truth  in  heaven,  as  the  Word, 
into  the   human   character   of  Jesus.     The   whole 
Word  of  Jehovah,  that  by  which  the  worlds  were 
made,  with  its  infinite  harmonies  of  truth  and  good, 
and  with  the  pressure  of  Jehovah  upon  them,  flowed 
down  upon  that  mind,  and  flowed  into  it,  and  said 
with  divine  voice  after  voice,  "  Thou  shalt  not  "  and 
^*Thou  shalt ;"  and  this  Word,  thus  combatant  against 
temptations,  and  thus  lived  into  actions,  was  made 
flesh  successively  in  that  life,-namely,  by  absolute 
obedience  to  the  Word,  by  absolutely  fulfilling  the 
Word.     The  Lord's  humanity  was  not  regenerated, 
but  glorified,  and  he  became  God  with  us.     Here 
then  there  is  not   mystery,   but   incomprehensible 
brightness.     It  is  divinely  loving,  divinely  wise  and 
divinely  useful.     It  is  the  exact  awful  ideal  of  our 


IN  S  WEDENBORG.     THE  INCARNA  TION      1 6 1 

own  regeneration,  in  which  the  higher  and  the 
hio*hest  life  penetrates  and  vanquishes  the  lower, 
until  the  truths  we  know,  acting  upon  our  hearts 
or  loves,  are  made  into  the  flesh  of  our  characters. 
The  Lord  has  redeemed  us,  saved  for  us  the  founda- 
tions of  freewill  and  rationality  against  all  the 
assaults  of  the  hells  ;  and  we  avail  ourselves  of  re- 
demption by  accepting  the  necessities  of  regenera- 
tion ;  and  then  after  death  by  His  mercy  we  can 
partake  of  His  salvation.  Again  this  is  not  mystery. 
But  then  the  scientific  mind  must  be  humble  and 
receptive.  It  must  study  the  subject  long  and  well. 
It  must  not  ask  questions  before  information,  such 
as  Why  the  Lord  came  then  ?  What  Jehovah  was 
doing  in  heaven  when  He  was  indwelling  in  Jesus 
Christ?  and  many  others,  which  can  indeed  be 
answered,  but  not  at  once  to  faculties  only  just 
separating  themselves  from  the  cruel  carnalities  of 
atheism ;  because  the  answers  are  not  merely 
natural,  but  divine  natural,  and  the  faculties  are  not 
receptive  of  them  to  any  great  extent  at  first.  They 
are  worse  than  childish,  they  are  corrupt,  and  re- 
quire regeneration  to  understand  the  regeneration 
of  man,  and  still  more,  the  glorification  of  the  Lord's 
Humanity. 

Now  the  point  made  is,  that  where  there  is  sub- 
stantial fact,  and  no  unnecessary  root  of  concealment 
whatever,  no  mystery,  there  is  the  condition  of 
science.  Without  unkindness  to  the  present  men, 
this  may  be  put  forth  the  more  boldly,  because  in 
a  recent  address  of  the  British  Association,  the 
position  was  taken,  that  all  theological  discourse 
about  creation  was  inept  there,  and  must  be  handed 
over  at  once  to  the  geologists,  physiologists,  and 
other  exact  people,  for  their  correction.      That  re- 


i62  POSITIVE  THEOLOGY. 

ligion  was  a  matter  of  emotions,  instincts,  feelings, 
and  of  ineradicable  poetry,  a  good  old  dream  haunt- 
ing songs;   confined  to  which  realm,  and  straitly 
limited  "to   no   more   ultimate   pretensions   than   a 
little  to  gild  and  beautify  life,  science  could  have 
no  objectfon  to  recognize  it  as  a  mysterious  and  in- 
dispensable somewhat.     This  is  not  quotation,  but 
the  spirit.     Now,  in  obedience  to  this  call,  we  put 
the  Incarnation  in  before  that  assembly,  where  it  will 
be  discussed  some  day.     It  is  placed  before  them  for 
their  approval.     But  then  it  is  obvious  that  their 
method  must  be  cautious ;  for  it  is  not  a  matter  of 
literal  mythological  creation  like  the  letter  of  the 
divine  Genesis,  misunderstood  because  read  without 
its  spiritual  sense,  but  it  is  a  divine  birth  within 
late  historical  time.     It  has  founded  the  true  birth 
of  every  man  since  who  has  been  born  again,  and 
therefore  has  founded  a  new  race  on  earth.     That 
race  has  been  less  than  the  rest  subject  to  religious 
emotions,   instincts,    sentimentalities,    and    poetical 
states,  considered  as  floating  enjoyments  of  the  mind, 
and  more  pressing  with  all  its  manhood  and  woman- 
hood to  live  truth,  and  beat,  down  evil  at  its  shew- 
ing; its  religion  has  been  a  fought  fight,  life-long, 
and  not  a  dream.     It  has  thus  forcibly  opened  every 
faculty  to  the  descending  influx  of  the  Lord.     And 
so  He,  its  archetype,   did  not  dwell  in  emotions, 
feelings,  and  instincts,  but  came  on  breastwise  against 
hell,  and  trod  it  under  His  feet  in  its  allurements 
and'promises,  in  its  principalities  and  powers.     Not 
a  bone  of  Him  was  broken.     The  ultimate  structure 
of  His  human  character  was  penetrated  to  the  soles 
of    His   feet,   to   the   business   of   His   daily   life, 
with  resistance  and  obedience.     That  mighty  force 
now   opens    upon    us,   opens   upon   the   halls   and 


THE  DIVINE  MAN. 


i<^3 


-  laboratories  "  of  the  British  Association,  opens  upon 
scientific  ambition  and  cruelty,  and  will  be  studied 
for  a  great  reform.  The  Association  has  called  for 
It,  and  It  comes.  The  Son  of  Man,  the  Lord  knocks 
at  the  door,  and  would  sup  with  that  Association  He 
will  eat  science  with  them  if  they  please ;  for  there 
is  no  mystery  in  His  sacrament. 

XLIII. 

THE  DlVmE  MAN  THE  PRDIE  OBJECT  OP  THE  ORGAXIC 

SCIENCES. 

It  may  be  said  that  these  are  metaphysical  and 
moral  not  physical  conditions,  tliat  have  been  por- 
trayed above.      But  on  their  own  shewing,  which 
IS  the  only  shewing,  they  are  not  metaphysical;  they 
belong  essentially  to  body  and  substance.     They  are 
m  the  realm  of  organic  birth,  which  in  this  world 
IS  physical.     They  record  beyond  avoidance  a  new 
genus  or  manner  of  man,  a  divine  man.     Can  science 
retuse  to  study  a  new  gmus,  especially  when,  in  the 
wiJl  force  which  flowed  and  flows  from  Him  He  is 
the  Prmce  of  all  organisms  ever  born  into  the' world 
Refusal  or  not,  this  fact  will  be  pressed  against  the 
breast  of  science  continually  henceforth,  by  men  who 
are    called,  and  chosen,  and  faithful."    And  in  time 
the  genera  and  species   of  time  and  space  will  lie' 
under  his  ordinating  feet.     The  coming  forth  of  such 
men  with  His  commission  is  the  condition  of  the 
pressure;  and  come  tliey  will.     On  either  side,  the 
^"1 ,  the   love,  the   liking,    is  the  deepest  ground 
ot  the  argument.     Tl,e  professors  plead  as  they  do 

Plead  fh    '^  .^*^^tr*'""'^'^^  '■  *^^  ^-^^"^g  -"^^  ^iJI 
pead  the  Divine  Man  because  they  love  the  soul  and 

Its  salvation.     When  the  forces  meet,  cold  reasoning 


164 


THE  DIVINE  MAN. 


will  depart  as  camp  following  into  the  rear.  Those 
who  are  ''  called,  chosen,  and  faithful "  will  stand  in 
their  ranks  of  certainty  with  organizing  power  and 
might.  Hotly  they  will  press  false  science  with 
true  science;  partial  science  with  entire  science; 
cruel  with  humane  ;  and  by  the  result  of  the  combat 
in  the  arena  of  science  itself  demonstrate  the  pres- 
sure of  the   Divine  Humanity,  and  the  omnipre- 

valence  of  the  Word. 

Scientism  as  a  sect  of  the  selfhood  is  astounded 
at  such  a  prophecy,  and  doubts  the  sanity  of  those 
who  make  it.     But  the  hand  of  time  is  open  now, 
and  rivers  of  newness  flow  out  of  it.     Justice,  which 
is  the  foundation  of  science,  has  of  late  been  busy  in 
the  world.     It  was  easy  to  forecast  much  that  has 
happened   of  late  years,  though   not   the  when  or 
the  how.      It  was  easy  to  be  certain  that  slavery 
must  die,  that  the  worst  false  glory  of  Europe  must 
be  smitten  to  the  dust ;   that  surrounding  nations 
that  had  cowered  before  it  would  arise  as  from  then- 
graves  ;  that  toleration  and  education  must  come  ; 
that  arts  linking  men  together  must  overspread  the 
earth ;  and  that  justice  and  mercy  standing  as  on  a 
rock  must  have  fresh  power  of  appeal  in  senates  and 
parliaments.     And  now  it  is  as  easy  to  discern,  since 
the  fulfilled  commission  of  Emanuel    Swedenborg, 
that  the  earth  with  all  its  knowledges  and  powers 
lies  at  the  feet  of  the  Divine  Humanity ;  with  this 
merciful  proviso,  that  it  will  never  be  forced  foi-* 
acceptance  upon  any  man,  but  will  plead  foot  to  foot 
and  breast  to  breast  with  those  who  oppose  it,  and 
make  its  truth  felt  exactly  in  proportion  as  men  are 
willing  to  concede  its  claims. 

There  is  room  also,  constantly  enlarging  room,  for 
all  these  things  to  happen ;  because  under  the  in- 


SWEDENBORG. 


165 


fluence  of  a  dead  church  and  a  false  science,  all  the 
higher  places  of  the  mind  are  becoming  vacant  and 
its  faculties  unused,  and  the  vacuum  calls  in  the  force 
for  which  its  walls  were  never  calculated — in  the 
present  case  the  powerful  truths  of  the  new  dispen- 
sation. 

XLIV. 


SWEDENBORG. 

At  this  place  it  is  expedient  to  dwell  upon  the 
fact  of  Swedenborg,  which  is  also,  like  the  roots  of 
all  great  human  changes,  a  fact  of  organic  birth. 
Born  in  1688,  and  dying  in  1772,  he  was  a  practical 
government  engineer,  miner  and  metallurgist  in  his 
calHng ;  and  he  devoted  himself  sedulously  to  the 
cultivation  of  the  natural  sciences,  and  to  the  im- 
provement of  the  arts  of  life.       In  works  on  the 
principles  of  chemistry  he  sketched  out  a  theory  of 
combining  forms,  and  regarded  atoms  as  architectonic 
of  substances  both  in  force  and  form.     His  contri- 
bution has  been  acknowledged  by  great  chemists  to 
some  extent ;  but  the  principles  he  places  remain  to 
be  worked  out  by  the  more  gifted  chemistry  of  a 
coming  time.     In  his  Principia,  the  laws  of  cosmical 
change  are  applied  to  suns  and  systems,  and  a  few 
principles  preside  over  the  constitution  of  the  physi- 
cal universe.     None  of  the  restrictions  of  the  literal 
theology  of  his   day  bind  the  good  ambition  with 
which  he  sought  to  approach  to  a  comprehension  of 
nature.     His  scientific  effort  contains  indeed  a  high 
correlative  to  the  theories  and  imaginations  wdiich 
have  been  since  in  vogue ;  and  perhaps  the  most 
daring  system  of  evolution  that  has  yet  been  stated 


i66  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  USES, 

—namely,  the  necessary  involution  of  the  first  vege- 
table  kingdom   in   the   first   mineral   kingdom,    on 
planets;   Imd   the   involution   of   the  first    human 
and  the  first  animal  kingdom  in  the  first  vegetable 
kingdom;  and  consequently  by  evolution  the  delivery 
of  the  pregnant  womb  of  nature,  and  the  birth  of  the 
kingdomsrincluding  man,  from  below  upwards.     But 
with  him  the  natural  process  was  also  the  process  of 
the  divine  inhabitation  and  manifestation,  and  not  a 
mineral  crystallized,  or  a  blade  of  grass  grew,  or  a 
creature  breathed,   from  itself,  but  from  the  con- 
stantly sustaining  influx  of  God.      And  therefore 
evolution  is  but  the  Word,  the  substantial  almighty 
truth,  momentaneously  speaking  shapes  and  forms 
and  functions  into  being,  and  then  animating  them, 
where  they  are  forms  recipient  of  life,  into  life.     And 
this  great  shadow  of  universal  substance  is  momen- 
taneously conserved  or  made  into  substance  by  the 
abiding  will  of  the  Creator.     He  never  thought  that 
force  does  anything  without  a  divine  heart  and  brain 
and  man  within  it ;  for  apart  from  these  there  is  no 
force,  but  only  collapse.      His  scientific  works  on 
physics  are  rich  in  suggestions,  and  contain  many 
views   which  will  be  planted  out  in  the  fields  of 
science  when  she  takes  to  questioning  nature  for 
holier  purposes  than  are  compatible  with  her  present 
ambitions. 

XLV. 


SWEDENBOKG   FOUNDS    HUMAN    PHYSIOLOGY— THE 

DOCTRINE    OF    USES. 

It  is,  however,  in  physiology  that  Swedenborg  is 
most  remarkable  for  our  purpose  now  as  a  student 


THE  DOCTRINE  01  USES, 


167 


of  science;  and  it  will  be  one  day  known  of  him  that 
he  is  indeed  the  founder  of  human  physiology  in 
distinction  to  general  animal  organology.     He  is  not 
only  the  founder,  but  has  as  yet  no  successors  ;  for 
the  very  conception  of  human  physiology  is  not  given 
in  the  scientific  mind.     He  was  able  to   be  that 
founder,  because  he  had  a  clear  intellectual  and  a 
wise  insight  into   that  which  alone  is  distinctively 
human,  namely,  the  soul  and  the  mind  of  man;  he 
divined  apparently  from  an  early  age  that  these  are 
organic,  though  spiritually  organic;  and  he  entered 
physiology  to  find  how  they  are  reflected  in  the  forms 
and  uses  of  the  bodily  organs.     If  the  body  has  a 
heart,  he  knew  that  the  soul  and  the  mind  have  a 
heart;  and  the  latter  term  found,  in  the  will  and  its 
derivations,  the  one  can  be  studied  in   the   other. 
''Tell  me,"  says  he,   ''wliere  tclse  can   the  soul  be 
found  than  in  her  own  kingdom,"  speaking  of  the 
living  body.     It  was  to  discover  the  soul  that  he 
studied  that  body  anatomically  first,  and  then  men- 
tally opened  it.     He  did  not  expect  to  discover  the 
soul  by  the  senses,  or  to  get  at  life  by  killing  life, 
but  by  the  correspondence  of  the  uses  of  the  bodily 
forms,  to  hear  the  voice  of  the  soul  speaking  itself 
into  natural  being,  and  thus  revealing  its  humanity, 
and  suggesting  it  into  the  very  senses.     For  the 
body,  under  the  Creator,  the  one  only  life,  is  first  a 
word  in  the  soul,  and  then  a  fiat  mouldinof  with 
organic  power  the  seed  and  the  embryo,  and  at  last 
the  more  matured  furnishing  of  the  temple  of  organic 
form,  in  which  use  is  the  first  and  the  last  considera- 
tion.     To  him  here,  and  throughout  his  writings, 
belongs  the  full  statement  of  the  Doctrine  of  Uses. 
This,  however  well  brought  forward  by  Bentham  and 
others,  has  rather  limited  use  than  advanced  it,  be- 


i68 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  FORMS. 


cause  the  current  doctrine  of  utility  regards  the 
highest  parts  of  man's  capacity  as  not  only  useless, 
but  fallacious;  whereas  Swedenborgs  doctrine  of 
uses  includes  these  as  the  main  and  everlasting  field 
of  utility,  which  is  formulated  in  his  expression,  that 
'Hhe  Lord's  kinofdom  is  a  kins^dom  of  uses."  In 
other  words,  the  Lord's  kingdom  is  a  kingdom  of 
daily  life  in  which  use  and  its  duties  are  done  here 
and  hereafter  :  the  New  Jerusalem  is,  if  we  may 
borrow  a  phrase,  a  divine  secularism,  in  which  men 
and  angels  do  God's  business  in  doing  their  own 
ariofht.  This  doctrine  of  uses  lies  in  the  heart  of  true 
physiology,  because  all  the  body  exists  in  order  that 
the  soul  may  come  into  this  world  by  it,  and  every 
function  and  dependency  of  the  body  is  a  part  of  the 
way  in  which  the  soul  accomplishes  its  own  incar- 
nation. • 

XLVL 

THE    DOCTRINE    OF    FORMS. 


The  Doctrine  of  Form  as  receptive  of  life  is  a 
department  of  the  same  thought.  It  is  a  doctrine 
unknown  as  yet  to  science.  The  present  mind  essays 
to  study  the  temple,  and  cannot  see  the  architecture 
for  the  stones.  It  begins  with  the  matter,  not  with 
the  mind.  It  may  truly  be  admitted  to  be  matter 
thinking.  It  is  as  nearly  the  dust  of  the  ground  as 
a  created  man  can  be  :  dust  conflated  of  human 
passions — fiery  protoplasm  at  the  beginning,  fiery 
hysteroplasm  for  its  end.  Its  opposite  is  that  forms 
are  the  engines  of  use,  and  that  ideas  and  plans  in 
divine  manform,  not  protoplasms,  are  the  be- 
ginnings of  all  things.     This  rests  upon  all  common 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  FORMS. 


169 


sense  and  all  analogy.  When  the  first  savages,  not 
the  first  men,  made  flint  knives,  it  was  the  form  of 
the  implement  that  made  it  useful ;  it  was  not  the 
stone  matter,  for  iron  would  have  been  better,  and 
steel  better  still ;  but  the  savage  mind  took  what  was 
to  hand,  and  gave  it  the  form  which  served  as  a 
knife.  The  present  physiology,  in  its  spirit,  would 
study  the  chemistry  of  the  stone,  not  the  employ- 
ment of  the  neolithic  knife,  to  elicit  the  archseology 
of  these  nations.  Further  on,  it  would  forget  the 
nations  in  analyzing  the  stones,  because  the  chemical 
path  leads  into  physics  where  men  and  women  are 
not  found.  These  remarks  apply  to  every  tool 
invented  by  the  mind  of  man  ;  it  is  its  shape,  make, 
form,  throuofh  which  all  its  service  flows.  For 
instance,  the  use  of  a  chair  does  not  depend  upon  its 
matter  or  protoplasm,  but  upon  its  having  four  legs 
and  a  bottom  and  a  back  suitable  for  personal  sitting. 
If  you  sent  it  in  powder  for  exploration  to  some 
eminent  physiologist,  and  he  were  foolish  enough  to 
record  his  experience  about  it  as  observations  on  a 
chair,  you  miglit  fairly  commit  him  for  better  ways 
of  knowledge  to  your  upholsterer,  who  makes  chairs 
and  does  not  destroy  them.  Now,  Swedenborg  saw 
with  intellectual  common  sense,  that  form,  not  matter, 
is  the  universal  condition  of  function  in  the  human 
body ;  and  that  as  that  body  in  general  is  for  the 
soul's  use,  its  forms,  in  detail,  are  the  exhibitions  of 
the  uses  which  the  soul  makes  of  them  in  detail. 
He  saw,  for  instance,  that  the  human  lungs  are 
for  human  respiration  because  of  their  form  ;  and 
furthermore  that  no  animal  could  use  such  forms, 
because  it  could  not  lay  hold  of  them  with  its  soul, 
having  no  voluntary  and  intellectual  mind  which 
corresponds  to  them.     He  saw  that  respiration,  be- 


lyo 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  FORMS, 


cause  of  the  form  and  connections  of  the  luno's 
because  of  their  association  with  the  other  forms, 
makes  the  whole  body  breathe  mechanically,  gives  it 
the  general  movement  of  all  its  functions,  draws  it 
out  into  acts  of  living.  He  saw  that  tliis  respiration 
in  waking  hours  corresponds  to  all  the  states  of 
thought,  and  that  the  lung  functions  are  the  out- 
breathed  word  of  the  human  understanding,  which 
thus  plays  down  upon  every  organ,  and  makes  it 
into  a  moving  part  of  the  character  of  the  man  ; 
carrying  the  spiritual  into  the  natural,  and  the  soul 
into  the  body,  by  a  great  highroad  of  organism. 
All  this  depends  upon  form  and  connections  of  form. 
Form  itself  corresponds  to  intellect ;  it  is  the  very  defi- 
nition of  the  use  of  things.  Withi  n  form  lies  inner  form, 
but  this  must  not  be  mistaken  for  matter,  it  is  always 
architecture.  Matter  is  but  the  daily  bread  of  form, 
good  bread  or  bad,  adequate  or  inadequate,  as  the 
case  may  be  ;  form  consumes  it  for  the  use  and 
support  of  the  hour  s  work  ;  but  it  is  put  aside  con- 
tinually and  replenished  continually,  whereas  the 
form  goes  through  its  functions  of  whatever  material 
it  may  be  made,  and  subsists  through  its  stadia. 
Only  one  time  comes  when  the  form,  the  human 
form,  is  indeed  material,  namely,  death  ;  but  then 
the  form  is  only  apparent,  and  the  matter  is  the 
reality.  It  is  in  ruins,  a  professorial  chair  of  dust ; 
it  corresponds  to  no  organic  use,  and  the  wise  soul 
refuses  to  sit  in  it. 

This  Doctrine  of  Forms  is  therefore  the  doctrine  of 
animation,  because  the  forms  fit  for  life  being  by 
spiritual  influx  into  them  recipient  of  life,  that  life 
is  inevitably  with  them  so  long  as  they  continue 
thus  receptive.  It  would  be  impossible  for  a  really 
human  body  not  to  be  alive,  or  to  be  alive  with  any 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  FORMS. 


171 


one  else's  life  than  its  own  ;  because  the  Lord's  life  is 
omnipresent,  and  flows  into  everything  in  its  degree 
according  to  its  form  ;  the  determinant  form  in 
itself  being  dead,  but  the  river  of  influx  making  it 
alive  momentaneously.  Swedenborg  has  said,  that 
the  cortical  substances  of  the  brain  are  ^^  forms 
accommodated  at  once  to  the  bemnnins:  of  motion, 
and  to  the  reception  of  life."  Here  we  have  the 
divine  influx  converted  into  organific  power  and  into 
Avill  power  in  the  beginnings  of  the  conscious  and 
unconscious  man ;  and  we  have  something  to  look 
for  in  the  cortical  glands  which  no  microscope  but 
wanders  farther  from,  and  only  an  illuminated 
intellect  can  liojie  to  discern.  We  have  something 
that  for  the  mind  is  co-ordinate  with  the  life  of  man- 
kind and  with  the  starry  sky.  The  problems  of 
animation  are  thus  manifold,  and  the  question.  How 
is  it  that  the  human  lunofs  are  alive  ?  is  answered 
in  distinguishing  how  they,  as  exact  engines  of  use, 
or  forms  of  use,  carry  on  their  service,  in  first 
breathing  the  body  into  perpetual  movement,  and 
secondly  in  importing  the  thoughts  and  wills  of  the 
mind  into  the  lower  or  corporeal  degree.  After 
you  have  mastered  the  lungs  well  anatomically, 
and  by  constant  observation  of  what  they  transact 
m  life ;  after  you  have  got  a  veritable  new  anatomy 
of  them,  as  you  will  do,  from  this  line  of  discovery ; 
ponder  them  also  as  inside  forms,  as  upright  intellec- 
tual forms,  as  real  forms  of  thought,  which  in  a  mirror 
they  are;  as  analogues  of  inspiration;  as  having 
with  them  in  their  place  and  poise  in  the  organic 
sky  the  whole  lung-difterence  that  there  is  between 
man  and  beast ;  and  you  Avill  begin  to  conciliate  life 
to  your  anatomy,  and  have  no  reason  to  torture 
ammals    for    the   dumb    guesses    their    miserable 


172  POSTURE  AND  POSITION  OF  ORGANIC  FORMS, 

oracles  can  give.  The  same  applies  to  every  other 
human  organ.  It  has  an  animation  of  its  own,  and 
reasons  for  that  animation,  all  under  the  general 
animation  of  the  lungs,  which  may  be  called,  the 
corporeal  consciousness.  The  form  is  the  accom- 
plished Word  that  carries  first  the  intellect,  and 
then  the  uses  of  organic  life,  along  with  it.  And  as 
intellect  is  light,  the  moment  this  is  seen  light 
enters,  the  body  becomes  transparent ;  and  indeed 
under  a  single-hearted  reception  of  sight  from  the 
Lord,  even  physiologically,  yea,  even  for  the  British 
Association,  the  Word  will  be  realized,  ''  Thy  whole 
body  shall  be  full  of  light." 


XLVII. 


POSTURE    AND    POSITION    OF    ORGANIC    FORMS. 


I.. 

In  order  to  accustom  the  British  Association  to 
these  new  truths,  we  will  dwell  a  little  upon  the 
fact  that  posture  and  position  are  an  essential  part 
of  the  doctrine  of  forms.  In  the  animal  body  these 
are  secured  by  the  skin  without  and  the  bones  within, 
and  by  the  innumerable  shafts  of  membrane  which 
intermediate  between  them,  and  partition  the  whole 
frame,  and  the  organs  and  organules,  into  order.  All 
the  forms  receptive  of  life  are  held  in  this  discipline 
and  drill  of  the  power  of  life.  To  exemplify, — it 
will  be  seen  at  once  that  every  mechanism  is  not 
only  fitted  for  its  uses  from  the  first,  but  requires 
to  be  in  situ,  that  is,  in  corresponding  mechanical 
posture  and  position  in  order  to  perform  these  uses. 
For  instance,  a  chair,  meant  to  sit  upon,  must  be 


POSTURE  AND  POSITION  OF  ORGANIC  FORMS,  173 

placed  on  its  feet ;  not  bottom  upwards,  or  on  its 
side.      A    locomotive    likewise   must    be  set  upon 
its  wheels  on  the  rails,   not    otherwise.     The  arti- 
ficer first,  and  then  the  owner,  looks  to  this,  and 
places  the  utensil,    whatever    it  be.     Now,  in  the 
human  frame,  the  organs  are  first  set    upright    in 
their  aim   of  use   by   the  Creator,    and   then  the 
man  inside  them  holds  them  upright  as  a  necessity 
of  his  life.     They  all  correspond  to  a  soul  capable  of 
uprightness,    and     are   him   in    this    in    countless 
images.      Thus  the   mere   position   of    the  human 
brain,  heart,  or  lungs,  is  an  extension  of  spiritual 
laws  down  into  anthropology,  and  carries  with   it 
into  the  organs  and  their  blood,  the  doctrine  of  man, 
and  of  man  only.     No  monkey  has  any  order  con- 
tinuous with  this  ;  nothing  but  the  apery  of  it  which 
is  the  mockery  or  monkeyism  of  analogy.     Now 
this  uprightness  of  human  organs,  by  which  they 
can  and  do  all  look  up  when  the  man  looks  up,  with 
their  brows  to  heaven  when  his  brow  is  to  lieaven, 
and  their  forehead  bent  to  hell  when  his  is,  deter- 
mines corresponding  positions  of  all  the  maintaining 
strands   of  fibres  ;    determines  the  mode  and  form 
of  influx  of  every  nerve  and  bloodvessel ;  determines 
the  internal  liberty  or  function  of  the  organs.      De- 
termines therefore  the  posture  of  life  in  the  whole  and 
in  every  part ;  and  rules  with  its  own  proper  altera- 
tions in  waking  and  in  sleep.     Hence  organic  forms, 
in  their  setting,  are  diflferent  for  every  man  accordino- 
to  his  genius  and  character,  and  ultimately  according 
to  his  spiritual  life.     So  also  in  all  animals,  the  way 
m  which  the  organs  are  hung  in  the  systema  animale, 
are  expressions  actual  and  potential  of  the  varied 
animal  life  and  character;    they  are   generic   and 
specific  for  all  genera  and  species.     These  are  truths 


•» 


^\ 


174  POSTURE  AND  POSITION  OF  ORGANIC  FORMS 

which  heedless  and  cruel  analysis  destroys,  unless  it 
be  the  dead  body  which  is  dissected,  and  the  anato- 
mist have  genius  or  better  gift  enough  to  reinstate 
the  parts,  and  see  them  in  working  gear  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  soul  and  representative  habits 
of  the  living  creature.  You  ought  to  be  able  to 
take  the  angle  of  influx  of  a  horse's  nerves  and 
veins  into  its  lungs,  and  to  show  that  the  horse 
life  lies  in  that  angle,  and  in  no  other  ;  that  that 
nervous  sun  and  that  system  cohere  together  by 
posture  in  a  harmony  ;  that  the  seasons  of  the  crea- 
ture's instinct  are  determined  by  the  exact  obliquity 
of  its  reception  of  life.  So  long  as  this  most  difficult 
thino-  is  not  done,  there  is  no  distinct  elementarv 
physiology  of  human  or  of  animal  organs. 


II. 


The  present  mode  of  physiology  bars  this  field 
ao'ainst  the  human  mind ;  because  it  explores 
matter,  not  form,  as  the  constituent  of  organization  ; 
and  therefore  covertly  encroaches  upon  chemistry 
and  dead  stuff*  while  it  professes  to  be  working  the 
loo-ic  of  life.  Leaving  out  form,  it  omits  posture, 
which  is  the  visible  representative  of  the  whole  life 
in  the  particular  part.  Man  upside  down  is  the  same 
to  it  as  man  upright  and  godlike  ;  it  is  the  clown 
of  biology.  It  voids  the  correspondence  of  the 
whole  with  the  parts ;  and  the  organs  become 
vagabond  from  purpose,  and  characterless.  Then 
more  general  chaos  comes  ;  and  all  flesh  is  held  to 
be  the  same  flesh ;  because  in  the  physiological 
shambles   where  what  was  once   organization   lies 


OSTURE  AND  POSITION  OF  ORGANIC  FORMS.  175 

about  in  pieces,  the  architect  of  the  ruin  can  see 
Httle  diflference  between  the  nerve  matter,  muscle 
matter,  or  lung  matter  of  a  dog  or  a  human  being. 
The  consequence  is,  a  physiology  irrespective  of  form 
as  the  mechanism  of  use,  and  as  the  product  of  a 
creative  and  redemptive  mind  ;  a  weltering  physio- 
logy compacted  of  matter  common  to  the  whole 
animal  kingdom  ;  as  was  said  before,  base  hystero- 
plasm  answering  to  base  protoplasm.  In  this 
physiology,  intellect  is  lost,  and  capacity  of  thought 
is  drowned.  From  it,  no  laws  of  the  soul  can  be 
seen  in  the  body,  when  yet  the  soul  is  all  in  all 
in  the  body.  No  divination  can  carry  the  lamp  of 
analogy  through  the  unsensual  avenues  of  the  ever 
active  organs  ;  for  in  the  absence  of  the  godly  sino-le 
eye  the  whole  body  is  full  of  darkness  ;  and  thus  to 
materialist  thought,  man's  earthly  frame  is  not  his, 
but  a  cup  of  beast  elements ;  at  best,  when  it  is 
built  up  by  the  most  skilful  hands,  a  solid  structure- 
less pyramid  of  permanent  inhumanity.  The  doc- 
trine of  forms  as  the  vehicles  of  uses,  and  of  posi- 
tions as  the  rails  on  which  forms  run,  is  the  rescue 
from  this  chaotic  state  ;  and  this  doctrine  in  intellec- 
tual and  physical  clearness  is  communicated  to 
science  in  the  writinofs  of  Swedenbor'T 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  present  physio 
logy  lies  like  a  swamp  under  the  house  of  medicine ; 
and  confuses  the  medical  mind  longing  to  see  into 
the  seats  of  disease,  and  the  means  of  cure.  It 
turns  aside  medical  genius  from  reverent  respect  of 
our  bodily  life,  and  prevents  the  jewels  of  form  and 
use  from  shining  through  the  eye  of  the  physician 
into  the  symptoms  of  the  patient.  It  also  makes 
surgery  Hcentious,  by  making  flesh  of  little  account, 
and  excisions  done  on  other  people  lawful  beyond 


176 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES. 


the  golden  rule.  And  further,  it  vitiates  public 
health,  by  diverting  it  from  the  higher  regards  of 
health,  which  are  first  spiritual,  and  then  natural ; 
and  throwing  the  whole  burden  of  it  upon  official 
external   arrangements    touching    only  the    lowest 


oTound  of  cleanliness. 


XLVIIT. 


THE    DOCTRINE   OF    DEGREES. 


The  Doctrine  of  Degrees  is  another  organon 
or  instrument  of  divine  light,  unknown  to  science 
at  present,  but  communicated  in  the  writings  of 
Swedenborg,  and  most  clearly  in  his  theology. 
It  is  the  doctrine  of  the  successive  planes  of  creation, 
which  are  also  planes  of  that  fundamental  correla- 
tion called  correspondence.  It  w^ould  require  a 
volume  to  illustrate  the  subject,  but  a  few  words 
may  begin  it.  Degrees  then  are  of  two  kinds,  con- 
tinuous and  discrete.  Continuous  degrees  exist 
where  a  grosser  medium  passes  to  a  rarer,  both 
being  in  the  same  plane.  Thus  for  illustration,  the 
whole  natural  world  is  one  continuous  degree,  in  the 
sense  that  it  is  all  dead  and  in  itself  passive  nature. 
However  subtilized  or  sublimated,  in  itself  it  makes 
no  approach  to  life,  but  the  sun's  light  and  heat  are 
dead  heat  and  light  as  the  stones  of  the  ground  are 
dead.  True,  natural  substances,  when  organized, 
become  receptive  of  life,  but  it  is  life  brooding  above 
them,  and  then  flowing  into  its  form  in  them,  which 
makes  them  live.  Thus  nature  is  a  bounded  plane, 
and   of    itself    cannot    mount    above    itself.      The 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES,  177 

spiritual  world,  which  is  not  a  world  of  spaces  and 
times,  but  of  states  and  their  variations,  is  a  plane 
beyond  nature,  and  which  invests  nature,  and  clips 
space  and  time  into  divine  order.     It  is  not  con- 
tinuous with  nature,  but  in  a  discrete  degree  above 
it ;  and  having  in  it  the  same  forms  as  nature,  as 
the  permanent  appearances  of  the  spiritual  states  of 
its  inhabitants,  substantial  as  their  immortality,  the 
natural  world  corresponds  to  it  form  to  form,  and 
the  two  are  together  by  this  correlation.     But  the 
border  between  them  cannot  be  infringed  :  the  dead 
world  is  only  acted  upon  by  the  living  world  by  in- 
duction of  correspondence,  that  is  to  say,  by  spiritual 
mflux ;  but  by  no  elimination  of  grossness  can  any 
element  of  matter,  space,  or  time,  intrude  into  the 
spiritual  realm.     Thus  naturalism  is  put  off  as  shoes 
before  the  mind  can  conceive  or  admit  the  existence 
of  a  spiritual  life. 

The  human  body  is  formed  as  an  image  of  these 
conditions.      Its   great  organs  and  solids  are  one 
degree,    the    lowest.      Above    and    within    these, 
though  never  becoming  them,  are  its  firmaments  of 
bloodvessels ;  and  set  in  these  though  never  becom- 
ing them,  are  its  suns  of  nerves.     The  nerves  end, 
as  the  rays  of  solar  light  end  in  earth  and  sky,  in 
the  bloodvessels,  but  tliey  are  adjoined,  not  conjoined 
to  them.     Swedenborg  has  clearly  shown  them  as 
vaso-motory,  regulating  calibre  by  ever-varyino-  in- 
flux; but  also  as  vaso-sensory ;  and  still  again  as 
vaso-inspiratory  nerves.     They  are  in  short  vaso- 
humanitary,  for  they  carry  the  whole  man's  life  and 
character  into  the  blood  field  below  them.    They  are 
however   discreted   by  impassable  barrier  of  their 
plane,   from   the   bloodvessels;    as    the    latter  are 
discreted  from  the  organs  into  which  they  also  flow. 

M 


178 


SPIRITUAL  INFLUX, 


SPIRITUAL  INFLUX, 


179 


And  so  also  the  mind  in  the  body  is  more  greatly 
discreted  from  the  nerves  into  which  it  flows.  Thev 
are  its  dead  fittingnesses,  which  it  must  use  to 
descend  by  influx  into  dead  nature.  But  you  can 
no  more  reach  mind  and  brain  by  natural  analysis 
of  them  through  the  senses,  than  you'  can  reach 
Hamlet  by  crucifying  Shakespear's  pen.  So  also  by 
no  analysis  or  ratio  of  mind  can  you  attain  the 
next  degree,  or  the  spiritual  man  who  lives  after 
death  ;  the  boundaries  grow  more  comprehensibly 
impassable  the  higher  the  plane.  The  more  you 
rack  the  life  of  the  natural  man  in  the  vain  attempt 
to  discover  the  spiritual,  the  more  you  fall  into 
denial,  and  your  science  succumbs  to  death. 

These  planes  of  degrees  admitted,  limit  the 
ambitions  of  science  ;  and  suggest  that  a  certain 
worthiness  is  the  claim  for  admission  of  the  mind  to 
any  more  inward  degree  of  things.  It  is  impossible 
to  transcend  created  boundaries,  except  by  beino^ 
above  them  as  well  as  below  them  in  your  own  heart 
and  mind  ;  say,  in  your  spirit ;  and  by  a  harmony  of 
each  with  each  existing  in  yourself  Into  such 
science,  whether  of  organ,  bloodvessel,  lymphatic, 
nerve,  mind,  aflection,  or  their  spiritual  corre- 
spondents, no  man  can  force  himself,  though  he  may 
be  prepared  by  an  adequate  life,  and  afterwards  be 
admitted  by  the  Lord. 


XLIX. 


SPIRITUAL    INFLUX. 


These   views   are   a   direct   combat   against    the 
doctrine  of  physical  flux  and  influx  as  represented  in 


the  existing  schools  of  naturalism.  They  are  the 
assertion  of  spiritual  influx  as  final,  causal,  and 
omniprevalent  in  nature.  Physical  influx  implies 
that  primordial  matter,  the  mystical  body  of  matter, 
has  in  it  or  behind  it  a  push  that  works  it  upward, 
and  that  at  certain  stages  of  the  forcing  it  becomes 
protoplasm,  the  weird  cauldron  of  nature,  and  by 
further  injections  and  exjections,  it  fights  its  way 
until  it  becomes  vegetable,  animal,  and  man  ;  the 
earliest  and  silliest  of  the  latter  species  being  the  in- 
ventors of  God,  whom  their  gifted  descendants  again 
resolve  into  protoplasm.  Swedenborg  differs  from 
this.  He  admits  the  whole  influence  of  the  natural 
upon  the  spiritual ;  but  always  with  the  complicity 
of  the  spiritual.  It  is  the  degradation  of  the  spiritual 
mind  that  allows  it.  The  degradation  of  man,  who 
is  the  end  of  nature,  is  the  fall  of  nature  also.  Yet 
nature  is  so  far  unfallen  that  it  exhibits  the  dominion 
of  the  divine  in  the  creation,  and  vindicates  spiritual 
influx  as  the  path  of  order,  and  physical  influx  as 
the  appearance  which  requires  to  be  reversed  to  be 

correct. 

It  is  important  to  dwell  a  little  more  upon 
physical  influx,  because  it  is  not  only  a  wrong 
method  of  thought,  but  leads  to  wrong  actions.  If 
material  nature  can  push  its  way  from  below  up- 
Avards,  if  the  body  can  make  the  mind,  and  after- 
wards tacitly  govern  the  mind,  all  conditions  come 
to  be  treated  physically,  and  diet  and  climate  sub- 
stitute the  soul.  This  is  now  a  common  scientific 
creed  ;  but  it  rests  upon  fallacy.  ''  Every  man  who 
behaves  as  if  he  has  a  soul,  knows  he  has  one." 
The  human  soul,  by  revelation,  by  intuition,  and  by 
experience,  is  inexpugnable.  So  is  the  human  mind 
as  an  immortal  personality.     Conscience  too  assures 


i8o 


SPIRITUAL  INFLUX, 


it  True,  it  is  denied,  but  not  from  rational  grounds, 
but  because  many  minds  and  souls  love  to  deny  it. 
This  opens  the  field  for  those  also  who  love  to  affirm 
it ;  and  on  their  side  they  have  all  the  substances  of 
proof,  with  the  counterproof  that  both  nature  and 
conscience  are  in  ruins  if  matter  not  spirit  is  the 
rulino-  power.  Remember  then,  that  the  battle 
here,°and  all  these  battles,  will  be  fought  primarily 
from  the  affections  on  either  side. 

The  influence  of  the  body  upon  the  mind  is  often 
cited  as  a  convincing  argument  that  the  mind  is  but 
a  condition  of  the  material  organization.     So  also 
the  decline  of  faculty  in  old  age,  and  the  obliteration 
of  memory  then,    and  when   disease   weakens   the 
frame.     But  the  body  is  indeed  the  medium  and 
instrument  which  incarnates  the  mind,  and  through 
which  the  mind  works.      If  you  vitiate  the  instru- 
ment, the  work  is  marred  ;  but  that  only  proves 
that  the  worker  has  his  hand  on  it  imperfectly  ;  not 
that  the  instrument  is  the  worker.     If  the  flute  is 
cracked  or  tuneless,  the  flute  player  is  limited  by 
its  imperfections  ;  he  may  be  discouraged  if  he  can 
get  no  other  flute  ;  but  his  powers  are  independent 
of  and  above  the  present  flute,  and  he  has  to  bide  for 
a  better  instrument.      So  a  brain,  once  sound  and 
sane,  may  fall  into  ruins,  and  the  mind  that  played 
thoughts  through  it  will  produce  but  fragmentary 
and  disordered  touches  of  thought  where  clearness 
and  coherence  were  once  the  rule  ;  but  the  mind  is 
all  there  when  the  ruined  cerebrum  is  either  cured 
or  discarded  ;  and  being  itself  the  essential  brain  on 
which   the   other  was  but  the  mortal  plating,   its 
capacities  are  unaffected,  and  will  recur  in  a  second 
life  in  higher  forms  ;  that  is  to  say,  if  the  man  has 
not  materialized  himself     All  this  is  obvious.     The 


SPIRITUAL  INFLUX, 


i8i 


difficulty  of  reconciling  the  two  parties,  of  spiritual 
influx,  and  physical  influx,  respectively,  clearly  de- 
monstrates that  the  source  of  each  creed  is  in  the 
heart,  and  not  first  in  the  head. 

The  creed  of  physical  influx  produces  bad  scientific 
actions.     It  produces  bad  actions  in  all  degrees  ;  but 
here  only  science  is  spoken  of.      If  matter,  evolving 
itself,  be   the  way  of  making  life,  if  there  is  no 
creation    of  life  from  above  by  an   influent  divine 
life,   then   science   will   make    knowledge,   and   en- 
gender itself,  by  following  the  same  path.     It  may 
fairly  expect  to  pounce  upon  life  and  its  formula  by 
closely  hunting  in  the  pack  of  matter.     Life  also 
there  being  conscienceless,  and  holiness  being  out  of 
its  predicates,   is  a  corpus  vile  on  which  experiment 
(short  of  being  hanged  for  making  it)  is  reasonable. 
The  immediate  outcome  is  the  cruelty  spoken  of  at 
length   in   the    foregoing   pages.      Physical   influx 
being  admitted,  the  scientific  counterpart  of  it  is  the 
physical  ingress  of  knife  and  poison  to  see  what  the 
influx  is  doing,  and  how  it  can  be  managed  ;  and  to 
watch  it  in  the  centres  of  agonized  nerves  where 
haply   life  may  be  some  day  caught  as  a  manu- 
factured  article,    and   the   process   be   successfully 
imitated  in  a  new  medical  Manchester.      Might  not 
immortality  be  had  in  this  way,  and  the  poor  dreams 
of  religion  be  reahzed  in  the  laboratories  of  viola- 
tional  science  ?    This  life's  love  exists  within  physical 
hiflux.      It  may  be  added,  that  spiritual  and  mental 
death  lie  in  it.     According  to  men's  faith  it  must 
be   unto   them.       If  they   deify  matter,  and   then 
act  as  machines  of  passion,  they  must  become  in 
another  life  the  express  images  and  persons  of  their 
aggression,  and  undergo  their  own  cruelty  from  each 
other. 


l82 


SPIRITUAL  INFLUX. 


By  divine  spiritual  influx  the  Lord,  from  lils  own 
single  personality,  through  planes  and  chains  of 
mediations,  through  the  heavens,  through  all  human 
minds  and  wills,  through  the  senses  of  mankind  in 
all  w^orlds,  and  of  all  creatures,  through  the  forms  of 
the  uses  of  all  things,  each  according  to  its  granted 
identity— is  omnipresent  in  both  the  spiritual  and 
natural  worlds,  and  binds  them  together  in  a  divine 
order  which  falsehood  and  evil  and  their  correlates 
can  never  infringe  ;  for  it  includes  both  heavens  and 
hells,  both  of  them  supreme  in  order.  This  is  the 
creation.  All  religion  and  love  can  live  in  it. 
Through  the  creed  of  physical  influx  w^e  have  athe- 
istic materialism  pondering  what  is  external,  super- 
ficial, temporary,  and  dead,  and  accepting  the  sum  of 
it  as  all  that  can  be  known  of  life  and  substance. 
This  is  insanity  the  opposite  to  the  creation,  and  at 
war  wdth  every  science  that  is  correlated  to  either 
world.  And  no  true  love  can  ever  have  a  leasehold 
cottage  in  such  a  creed. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  indicate  in  some 
measure  the  front  which  Swedenborg  presents  equally 
to  the  science  of  his  own  and  of  this  day.  His  position 
is  that  of  a  man  of  capable  genius  for  physics  and 
physiology,  animated  by  an  ardent  belief  in  a  Divine 
Person,  and  in  the  soul  as  His  image,  and  determined 
with  reverence  to  examine  by  these  lamps  of  faith  the 
concealed  avenues  of  form,  structure  and  function, 
and  to  discover  in  part  how  they  too  are  the  embodi- 
ments and  images  of  the  man  who  is  the  true  soul 
inside  them.  In  carrying  out  this  process,  his  induc- 
tions and  deductions  contain  truths,  human  truths, 
or  in  other  words  there  is  a  spiritual  sense  reigning 
in  physiology,  answering  to  the  fact  that  the  soul  by 
creation  reigns  in  the  body,  and  God  in  the  soul. 


SPIRITUAL  SIGHT  OPENED. 


183 


These  works  we  heartily  commend  to  physiologists. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  principles  and 
method  being  the  reverse  of  those  at  present  in  vogue, 
and  the  aim  also  ;  the  whole  cast  of  the  terminology 
being  alive,  as  beseems  a  science  of  life  ;  it  requires 
some  little  time  before  the  scientific  reader  perceives 
the  important  positions  which  are  won,  and  the  laws 
which  extend  the  powers  of  thought  to  an  insight 
which  is  beyond  anything  permitted  by  the  present 
systems.     Moreover,  the  discoveries  of  investigators 
since   lie   strewn   over   the   field   of    Swedenborgs 
Economy  of  the  Animal  Kingdom  and  Animal  King- 
dom, two  works  which  are  exclusively  devoted  to  the 
human  body.     But  these  works  cannot  be  pieced  to 
physiology  as   materialism    and    violationism    have 
made  it  now.     They  require  to  be  studied  and  dis- 
cerned in  their  philosophy  at  first-hand. 

Two  of  his  phrases  may  be  noted  here  as  distinc- 
tive of  his  creed  of  nature.  "  Subsistence  is  per- 
petual existence,  and  preservation  is  perpetual 
creation."  And  "  one  thing  alone  is  perfectly  clear 
to  me,  that  all  things  flow  in  provided  order  from  an 
end,  throuc^h  ends,  to  an  end,  and  that  the  wor- 
shippers  of  nature  are  insane." 


L. 


SPIRITUAL    SIGHT   OPENED. 

Swedenborg  found  the  soul  represented  in  the  body, 
and  thus  that  the  body  is  the  natural  equation  of  the 
soul ;  and  his  physiological  physical  works  constitute 
an  amazing  drama  of  living  representations.  Yet 
his  genius,  as  humble  as  it  was  aspiring,  could  not 
of  itself  unlock  the  door  that  leads  from  the  repre- 


i84 


SPIRITUAL  SIGHT  OPENED. 


SPIRITUAL  SIGHT  OPENED, 


i8' 


sentation  to  the  reality.     At  the  top  of  his  own 
efforts,  while  yet  in  full  work  in  the  chambers  of 
imagery,  his  spiritual  sight  was  opened,  and  he  saw 
souls  as  human  beings.     In  other  words,  he  saw  for 
nearly  thirty  years  the  men  and  women  he  had  pre- 
viously known  in  the  world,  and  innumerable  others 
besides,  all  dwellers  in  the  spiritual  world ;  he  saw 
that  they  were  distributed   into  spiritual  societies 
according  to  their  affections,  good  or  bad ;  and  that 
their  lot,  happy  or  unhappy,  answered  with  divine 
strictness  to  the  life  which  they  had  loved  and  ac- 
quired to  themselves  here  on  earth.     He  also  saw 
that  the  world  they  inhabit,  the  places,  like  the 
organism  of  an  extended  universal  body,  correspond 
exactly  to  the  souls  who  dwell  there,  and  change  as 
the  states  of  those  souls,  those  men  and  women, 
change.     He  learnt,  not  saw,  that  the  spiritual  world 
is  thus  human  from  its  beginning,  because  Jehovah 
from  eternity  is  a  Divine  Man ;  and  thus  the  mankind 
of  all  universes  streaming  into  the  spiritual  world 
is  organized  by  Him,  Jehovah,  into  what  Sweden- 
borg  calls  Maximus  Homo,  the   Grand  Man ;  each 
person,  in  his  place,   being  an  organic  constituent 
in  some  province,  organ,  or  member  of  this  humanity, 
of  which  Godman  is  the  soul.     Tiie  solution  was  a 
simple  one ;  instead  of  abstruse  souls,  all  souls  are 
real   and   concrete,  and  visible    and    tangible ;    im- 
mortal men  and  women ;  emancipated  to  heavenly, 
or  bound  to  hellish,  uses,  according  to  their  fitness 
for  either ;  the  fitness  being  determined  by  what  they 
love,  and  thus  call  good,  and  what  they  delight  in. 

Science  reigns  here.  In  the  first  place  there  is 
reality,  which  is  the  bread  of  science.  Then  as  a 
theory,  or  naturalli/,  the  whole  thing  is  true,  or  con- 
sists of  truths,  just  as  the  Newtonian  theory  is  true, 
or  as  the  circulation  of  the  blood  is  true  ;  it  accounts 


for  all  the  facts  of  its  own  vast  case.     Next  it  is 
spiritually  true,  because  it  enforces  by  awful  con- 
siderations the  needful  dominion  of  the  spiritual  oyer 
the   carnal   man,   and   carries  down   divine  justice 
through   every    fibre   and    every   administration   of 
society,  and  penetrates  this  world  with  the  rays  of  the 
uses  of  the  New  Jerusalem.     Next  it  is  celestially 
true,  because  it  shows  what  heaven  is,  and  that  love, 
the  celestical  principle,  is  all  in  all  in  the  creation. 
Also  that  love  makes  its  own  light,  which  is  wisdom 
first,  and  then  spiritual  intelligence;  and  that  natural 
intelligence  of  the  Lord's  works   springs  from  no 
other  source,  but  shines  down  from  Him.     Next  it 
is  rationally  true,  because  a  new  faculty  of  reason  is 
born  of  it ;  a  new  ratio  between  the  life  before  death 
and  the  life  after  death,  whereby  it  is  given  to  man 
during  every  moment,  in  every  act,  to  live  the  one 
life  for   the   sake  of  the  other,— to  live  down  his 
selfhood  for  his  Lord. 

It  is  of  course  scientifically  true,  as  true  as 
chemistry  or  geology,  as  soon  as  science  honestly  and 
in  good  faith  investigates  it. 

It  is  also  personally  true.  And  here  science  must 
enlarge  her  boundaries  to  the  dimensions  of  the  good 
heart  and  the  good  message,  that  is  to  say,  to  Gospel 
dimensions.  Along  with  its  self-evidences  to  each 
bosom,  which  are  attestations  permitted  to  us  from 
conscience  and  reason,  and  without  which  all  else  is 
vain,  because  otherwise  there  is  no  court  of  appeal  in 
men,  comes  the  fact,  that  the  greatest  and  sanest 
intellect  since  the  Lord's  incarnation,  Emanuel 
Swedenborg,  throws  down  his  unquestioned  honest 
word  that  he  has  been  intromitted  by  the  Lord  into 
the  spiritual  world,  into  heaven  and  into  hell,  and 
has  seen  these  things  with  spiritual  senses  correspond- 


i86 


PERSONAL  EVIDENCE  SUPREME. 


PERSONAL  EVIDENCE  SUPREME. 


187 


I  i| 


ing  to  his  bodily  senses.  If  the  narrations  commend 
themselves  for  all  other  reasons,  divine  and  human, 
as  they  do,  this  honest  word  of  a  man  is  a  crown 
of  personal  evidence,  a  certificate  avouching  the 
spiritual  world  to  all  mankind. 


LI. 


PERSONAL    EVIDE^X^E    SUPREME. 

Such  reality  is  everywhere  granted  by  providence 

in  these  great  affairs  of  use  and  salvation.     Since 

the  beginning  spiritual  openings  have  been  effected 

in  the  hardened  walls  of  human  nature.     Seers  and 

prophets  have  made  revelation  personal,  and  honesty 

of  weight  for  the  most  important  facts.    Things  that 

outgo  daily  experience  have  been  attested  over  all 

the  world  by  the  personal  character  of  the  narrators. 

Honesty  will  establish  anything,   especially   when 

one  honest  man  after   another,  in   every  age   and 

country,  deposits  his  stone  of  experience,  and  the 

unpremeditated  building  rises  under  an  unseen  hand 

into   heavenly  proportions,  and  becomes   the   only 

fitting  abode  of  conscience,  of  affection,  of  love,  and 

of  religion.     Such  personal  evidence  is  the  highest 

testimony  of  all,  for  every  virtue  is  behind  it ;  it  has 

unique  eyes  for  observation  ;  it  is  counterchecked  by 

other  honesty  like  its  own  ;  its  flaws  are  of  time  and 

space  and  expression,  the  necessities  of  epochs,  which 

the  spirit  within  purges  away ;  it  stands  on  a  final 

divine    basis,    on    character    as   a   substance;    and 

accordingly  the  persons  of  men  have  been  made  the 

means  of  the  revelations  of  both  the  Old  and  New 

Testaments.     "  I,  John,  saw  the  Holy  City,"  says 

the  divine  Apocalypse.     ''I,  Emanuel  Swedenborg, 


had  my  spiritual  eyes  opened  to  the  spiritual  world 
in  1743,  and  this  continued  constantly  till  death  in 
1772,"  is  the  similar  testimony  of  sight  of  that 
humble  man.  In  both  cases  the  affirmation  is  per- 
sonal ;  in  both,  enlightened  reason  and  the  common 
sense  of  mankind  will  in  time  accept  the  conclusions 
as  their  own. 

Granted,  any  free  man  may  deny  these  positions, 
and  refuse  assent  to  all  he  cannot  repeat  in  his  own 
experience.     By  this  method,  the  world  is  made  up 
of  planes,  strata,  of  denial.     The  lowest  people,  by 
their  reason  and  science,  cannot  see  what  the  people 
of  the  plane  above  them  see,  and  deny  it.     The  next 
layer  denies  the  positions  of  the  one  above  it;  and 
so  up  to  the  top  layer,  which  denies  God,  because  in 
their   way,   of  impersonality    to    themselves,   they 
cannot   see   him.     Both   states,   of  acceptance  and 
denial,  follow  from  the  laws  of  heaven  and  of  hell. 
There    is   a    text    Avhich    illustrates    this.      ''The 
kingdom    of  heaven  is   as   a   man   travelling   into 
a  far   country,   who  called   his  own  servants,  and 
deUvered  unto    them    his    goods,    to    every    man 
according  to  his  several  ability."     The  kingdom  of 
heaven   is   the   dominion  of  the  divine    truth  ;    it 
comes  from   the    Lord's   personality  acknowledged 
and  obeyed  in  daily  life;    it  recedes   from  natural 
observation,  and  is  obscured  as  by  distance  in  this 
mortal  life,  lessening  and  lost  to  the  view  as  a  man 
travelling  into  a  far  country.      It  goes  away  ap- 
parently, that  it  may  be  not  tyrannical,  but  influ- 
ential.    *'His   own   servants"    are    the   truths   we 
know  and  the  uses  we  make  of  them.     They  inherit 
in  our  persons  the  personality  of  our  Master  ;    to 
them  he  delivers  his  goods,   and  these  are  appro- 
priated to  us  in  the  vessels  of  life  which  we  have 


1 88 


PERSONAL  EVIDENCE  SUPREME, 


PERSONAL  EVIDENCE  SUPREME, 


189 


If 


'  ) 


\  A 


:i 


1 


\ 


«,! 


deliberately  formed  in  our  characters.  The  point 
sought  to  be  illustrated  here  is,  that  personal  attesta- 
tion, as  it  is  the  highest  of  proofs,  is  so  guarded  from 
profanation  that  it  is  the  most  susceptible  of  denial. 
This  is  the  going  "  away  into  a  far  country."  The 
pressure  of  every  such  truth  is  regulated  by  divine 
statics,  to  leave  free  choice  of  acceptance  or  rejection 
to  the  will.  And  thus  the  apparent  weakness  of  the 
personal  argument  is  but  the  mercy  that  will  not 
overbear  the  faculty  of  will,  and  destroy  the  founda- 
tion of  humanity,  which  freewill  is.  But  in  itself 
the  highest  personal  experience,  and  the  organization 
of  such  experiences,  are  omnipotent,  and  there  are  no 
bounds  to  their  power  of  attestation  of  anything  in 
the  natural  or  the  spiritual  worlds  ;  or  in  regard  to 
the  incarnation,  the  birth,  death,  and  resurrection  of 
the  Lord,  w^hich  are  both  in  and  above  the  w^orlds, 
and  w^hich  found  in  their  own  divine  reasons  the 
faculties  which  acknowledge  them. 

The  science  of  personal  attestations  of  these  high 
things  is  one  with  the  jurisprudence  of  the  truths 
of  religion  and  spiritual  life ;  and  in  the  trial  in 
w^hich  divine  truth  submits  itself  in  its  statements, 
as  it  always  does,  to  human  reason,  the  persons  of 
the  witnesses  are  necessarily  involved.  At  tlrst, 
the  nature  of  their  statements  is  less  in  question 
than  the  character  of  the  witnesses ;  necessarily  so, 
because  the  statements  for  the  most  part  cannot  be 
judged  until  they  have  made  and  enlightened  a  new 
mind  to  receive  them  ;  whereas  the  ability,  virtue, 
good  faith,  and  coherence  of  the  witnesses  can  im- 
press at  once  if  fairly  weighed.  Thus  the  four 
Evangelists  come  into  court  with  the  full  power  and 
pressure  of  honesty  and  sanity.  The  report  is  ex- 
traordinary ;  but  they  had  something  new  to  human 


nature  to  tell ;  a  message  of  facts  that  has  to  create 
a  faculty  for  its  own  reception  ;  and  in  the  mean- 
time their  four  persons  and  four  voices  are  an  un- 
contradictable  proof  in  their  favour.  There  is  no 
witness  against  them  in  the  whole  world,  except 
that  to  the  uncorrected  natural  man,  the  message  is 
not  likely,  which  at  first  it  is  certain  that  it  never 

can  be. 

In    truth,   all    the   lower   sciences   repose   upon 
feebler  bases  than  the  personal  truth  of  their  dis- 
coverers;    and  upon  poorer  counterchecks  in  their 
issues.     They  depend  upon  the  capacity  of  the  com- 
mon mind  to  repeat  the  experiments  and  observa- 
tions under  all  circumstances;    and  they  rely  for 
correction  upon  the  perpetual  elimination  of  natural 
mistakes.      Whereas    these    personal    knowledges, 
sciences,  or  truths,  cannot  be  repeated  at  will ;  they 
involve  an  inspiration,  or  an  illumination,  of  the  mind 
that  conveys  them  to  men;    and  their  correction 
age  by  age,  which  also  takes  place,  is  only  a  cor- 
rection of^'the  sense  of  the  letter  ;  and  is  effected  by 
fresh  and  fresh  apprehension  of  their  spiritual  side ; 
and   moreover  they  appeal  to  a  high  justice  and 
affection    in  their  audiences,   or  their  court  is  not 
constituted.      They  are  regenerations  of  the  mind 
itself,  and  are  acknowledged  as  they  regenerate. 

The  end  is,  that  the  completion  of  all  the  sciences 
without  exception  depends  upon  divinely  commis- 
sioned persons,  who  from  above,  with  their  word, 
their  truth,  their  revelation,  front  the  array  of  facts 
advanced  from  below  upwards,  and  supply  informa- 
tion and  life  which  are  organic,  and  which  in  time 
the  lower  nature  of  things  substantially  attests. 
Thus  material  science  even  is  feebly  personal,  and 
requires  much  to  be  taken  for  granted.     Spiritual 


I) 


I' 


190  PERSONAL  EVIDENCE  SUPREME. 

science  which  completes  material,  is  divinely 
personal ;  and  shines  by  its  own  inherent  light ;  and 
it  takes  nothing  for  granted  but  the  humility, 
sincerity,  and  open-mindedness  of  its  devotee. 

Passing  from  testimony  as  the  highest  ground  of 
faith  in  fticts,  and  from  Swedenborg  as  an  un- 
contradicted witness  to  a  new  world  of  spiritual 
observations,  a  few  words  are  needed  regarding  his 
peculiar  case.  As  a  seer,  though  for  extent, 
exactitude,  and  compass,  no  such  man  is  known  in 
history,  yet  his  case  is  supported  by  a  subordinate 
army  of  seers  co-extensive  with  human  annals.  The 
spiritual  world  has  often  been  opened  through 
organic  internal  sight  in  various  degrees.  For  the 
most  part  these  accounts  concur  with  each  other, 
and  with  Swedenborg  s  vast  experiences.  In  all  of 
them  the  spiritual  world  is  blessedly  harmonic,  or 
terribly  correspondential.  In  all  of  them  holds 
what  Swedenborg  says,  that  heaven  is  divine  justice 
with  divine  mercy,  that  hell  is  such  justice  without 
such  mercy.  In  all  of  them  men  and  women  are  in 
human  forms,  and  the  character  of  each  person 
determines  his  form  and  his  circumstances.  But 
Swedenborgs  case  supplies  the  key  to  the  rest. 
His  organism  w  as  prepared  from  his  birth  upw\ards  ; 
his  natural  body  and  senses  were  thus  capable  of 
an  acquiescence  which  allowed  of  the  emancipation  of 
the  spiritual  man  from  their  influence,  and  of  his 
intromission  then  into  the  spiritual  world.  He  was 
there  as  a  full  man  while  also  he  was  here  on  earth 
a  full  man;  an  amphicosmic  person,  indigena 
tttriusque  mundi.  Respiration  coincides  with  the 
plenary  inspiration  of  which  the  human  body  is 
capable ;  and  in  him  respiration  could  stand  with 
the  bodily  frame  in  its  guardianship,  holding  natural 


PERSONAL  EVIDENCE  SUPREME. 


191 


life,  while  the  spiritual  body  passed  consciously  into 
its  own  spiritual  world.     Thus  he  was  twice  born. 
His  spiritual  eyes  and  spiritual  mind  were  opened 
about    1743,   and    he    saw   and    apprehended    the 
heavens  and  the  hells,   and   the  world  of  spirits, 
which  is  the   preliminary  state  in  which  the  good 
put  off  the  external  evil  states  and  habits  which 
cling  to  them,  and  the  evil  put  off"  the  shows  of  good 
which  then  do  not  cling  to  them ;  in  both  cases  by 
temptations  corresponding  to  those  which  all  men 
pass  through  here  on  earth ;  character  being  thus 
cleared  of  its  practical  evils,  or  of  its  pretences  to 
good  and  non-essentials.    The  Lord  Himself  opened 
the  eyes  and  mind  of  Swedenborg  by  a  personal 
appearance.     He  revealed  Himself  as  a  Divine  Man, 
once  Jesus  Christ  in  Judea,  but  after  his  completed 
victory  over  hell  and   death,   as  the  incarnate  Je- 
hovah,  the    Lord.       He    also    gradually,    because 
rationally,  opened  to  Swedenborg  the  spiritual  sense 
of  the  Word  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  which 
is  recorded  in  his  great  work.  The  Arcana  Ccelestia. 
Here  the  Word  stands  as  the  Logos,  inexpugnable 
to  human  criticism.     In  one  sense,  no  matter  who 
of   prophets   and   evangelists   wrote    it,    or   where 
it   was    penned,    the    Lord    of    the   internal   sense 
wrote  it.     The  mountain  of  its  defences  cannot  be 
taken,  because  it  is  the  Lord's  divine  natural  and 
divine  rational  life,  in,  and  above,  the  world ;  and 
closed  against  the  profane.     It  was  in  a  prepared 
human  organization  that  this  opening  was  effected, 
and  through  a  prepared  adequate  mind  of  a  man 
that  the  new  knowledge  was  promulgated  by  the 
press.     This  is  personal  evidence  of  divine-rational 
things,    and    divine-rational    evidence    of   personal 
things. 


192 


ILLUMINATION  OF  REASON 


ILLUMINATION  OF  REASON 


193 


I 


i! 


»   I 


LII. 


ILLUMINATION   OF    REASON. 

The  new  point  here  is,  that  the  Lord's  commu- 
nications   to    mankind    through    Swedenborg    are 
through  a  man  at  the  summit  of  his  natural  powers 
and  efforts,  after  a  considerable  lifetime  spent  in  a 
reasonable  search  for  the  evidences  and  characters 
of  the    soul   and   the   immortal   state.       Speakmg 
naturally,  a  sublime  reason  w^as  engaged  in  most 
earnest  striving  in  these  processes.     There  was  an 
ardent  human  love  behind  it,  to  lead  the  sceptical 
scientific  mind  by  a  new  avenue  in  its  own  field  to 
religious  faith.     He  stood  here,  one  may  say  as  an 
Englishman,  as  a  Shakespear  in  the  midst  of  the 
willing  sciences.      They  knew  his  voice,  and    ran 
into  the  forms  of  his  genius.     In  all  this,  a  rational 
faculty  capable  of  instructing  mankind  on  their  own 
platform,  was  slowly  developed  from  his  early  years. 
His  labours  were  colossal ;   and  great  streams  and 
lakes  of  thought  exist  in  his  unpublished  scientific 
manuscripts  to  show  what  he  traversed  towards  his 
end.     The  point  gained  was,  a  reason  enlightened 
by  the  perception  of  new  natural  truths  not  war- 
rino-  with    religion,   but   capable   of  becoming   the 
vehicles   of  spiritual  truths.     To   this    reason   the 
Lord   descended,  and   in  no  way  superseding   the 
freedom    or    faculty  of  the    man  Swedenborg,  He 
communicated  to  him  an  illumination  adequate  to 
the  purposes  of  His  providence,  and  thereby  gave 
to  the  world  an  illuminated  reason,  a  new  manner  of 
man,  and  through  him  a  rational  revelation.     This 


can  be  nothing  less  than  a  coming  of  the  Lord;  in- 
deed, unless  a  prior  claim  be  made  for  some  other 
instrument,  His  second  coming,  His  rational  second 
coming.     Now  the  first  coming  disappointed  the  old 
religious  w^orld,  which  looked  for  a  great  king,  and 
behold  a  little  child  laid  in  a  manger,  a  man  of  sor- 
rows, and  a  death  on  the  cross.      And  the  second 
coming  is  equally  far  from  the  mark  of  religious 
expectation.     It  has  with  it  nothing  that  is  written  in 
the  letter  of  Scripture,  though  everything  that  is 
contained  in  the  spirit  within  the  letter.     Pre-emi- 
nently it  is  the  Lord's  gift  to  mankind.     The  elder 
religious  dispensations  w^ere  not  fully  given  to  man ; 
they  were  shown  to  him  for  his  guidance,  and  sat 
upon  their  thrones  to  receive  his  homage  and  com- 
mand his  obedience.     But  the  dispensation  of  the 
New  Church  through  Swedenborg  is  a  divine  present 
to  the  human  family.     And  it  is  so  because  it  has 
been  passed   through  the  reason   of  a   finite  man 
proved  and  approved  for  that  design,  and  in  the 
consociation  with  heaven  thus  brought  about,  it  is 
for  every  mind,    a   perpetual   exhortation   of  that 
text,  ''  Come  let  us  reason  together,  saith  the  Lord." 
It  is  a  new  position  in  history,  where  every  new 
position  is  a  substance  and  has  its   consequences. 
There  have  been  many  divinely  enlightened  men  in 
the  Christian  ages;   but  that  is  not  what  is  here 
imphed  ;  the  new  point  is  a  human  reason  possessed 
and   illuminated   by   the    Lord,    whose   works   are 
rational  works,  and  can  be  attested  as  such  by  the 
common  relidous  reason  of  mankind ;  which  reason 
therefore  as  it  arises  is  the  inevitable  realm  of  the 
Lord  s  New  Church. 

Whilst  we  are  upon  this  subject,  we  may  observe 
that  the  end  and  issue  were  as  little  reckoned  upon 

N 


h 


II 


»  t 


m 


ril 


1 94  ILL  UMINA  TION  OF  REASON. 

by  Swedenborg  himself  as  the  first  coming  of  the 
Lord  in  the  flesh  was  expected  by  the  Jews.  To 
the  very  last  of  his  own  thoughts,  he  sought  the  soul 
and  the  spiritual  life  as  abstract  verities,  to  be 
organized  indeed  into  a  body  by  sciences  and  their 
doctrines,  and  to  constitute  thus  an  incarnate  philo- 
sophy, as  it  were  a  body  of  truths,  and  thus  a  soul 
within  the  body.  If  this  could  have  succeeded, 
there  would  still  have  been  mystery  in  the  back- 
ground, and  for  all  but  philosophic  moments,  the 
grave  behind  all.  But  the  end  was  bigger  than  the 
apparent  means,  because  the  means  had  in  them 
other  means  unseen.  It  is  instructive  to  recognize 
in  Swedenborg  the  shortness  of  the  hand  of  the 
natural  man  at  his  best,  when  he  reaches  it  into  the 
unknown  by  his  own  proper  power.  The  unknown 
is  seemingly  put  farther  back,  but  remains  unknown. 
And  when  the  true  knowledge  comes,  it  disappoints 
the  world,  is  no  sequent  of  striving  ideas,  and  is 
^'foohshness  to  the  Greeks."  Even  Swedenborg 
expected  the  soul  to  reveal  herself,  clad  in  immense 
attributes,  and  visible  to  the  mind's  eye  of  the 
inmost  thought. 

Thus,  in  his  Economy  of  the  Animal  Kingdom, 
after  illustrating  the  position  that  the  soul,  ''  when 
emancipated  from  the  bonds  and  trammels  of  earthly 
things,  will  still  assume  the  exact  form  of  the 
human  body,"  he  proceeds  thus—''  And  live  a  life 
pure  beyond  all  imagination.  Then,  that  is  to  say, 
the  soul  will  live  its  own  life,  namely,  in  its  own 
intelligence,  in  the  representation  of  the  universe,  in 
the  intuition  of  ends,  in  the  beginning  of  determi- 
nations ;  a  life  inexpressible  by  words  ;  incommuni- 
cable in  its  degree  to  the  body ;  the  inmost  life  of 
itself ;  a  life  left  to  itself ;  subject  to  no  lower  lord— 


ILLUMINATION  OF  REASON 


195 


neither. to  the  imagination,  nor  its  allied  cupidities; 
a  life  most  distinct,  unanimous,  constant,  immutable  ; 
above  the  nature  of  the  sublunary  world ;  beyond 
time ;  almost  apart  from  degrees  and  moments, 
except  that  myriads  of  its  moments  and  degrees  will 
equal  but  one  of  ours,  and  yet  myriads  of  ours  will 
not  appear  to  it  as  one  appears  to  us  :  a  life  only 
terminable  in  its  representations  and  intuitions  by  the 
created  universe.  The  ear,  though  it  lies  in  a  carved 
recess  in  the  petrous  bone  of  the  temples,  neverthe- 
less can  drink  in  sounds  from  no  mean  distance. 
The  eye,  although  but  a  little  ball  shut  up  in  its 
orbit,  penetrates  nevertheless  to  the  sun  and  stars, 
and  by  the  assistance  of  art,  pierces  into  the  sub- 
stances of  nature's  purer  sphere.  The  mind  goes 
even  beyond  the  stars.  What,  then,  is  the  range  of 
the  soul,  which  is  above  the  mind,  a  representation 
of  the  universe,  order,  truth,  above  the  rules  which 
govern  effects,  in  the  very  aura  of  the  universe  ? 
Nay,  but  in  respect  to  its  operations,  it  does  not 
terminate  with  nature,  but  is  capable  of  regarding 
ends  beyond  nature,  and  therefore  of  rising  to  the 
Creator.  Why  should  I  say  more  ?  If  the  mind 
would  represent  to  itself  the  perfections  of  this 
exalted  life,  it  must  rise  above  itself,  and  out  of  the 
region  of  the  abstract  take  ineffable  forms  of  things, 
and  then  so  far  as  it  is  persistent  there  and  lifted 
above  the  lower  mind,  thought  carries  it  away,  I 
know  not  whither." 

But  now,  in  a  moment,  by  divine  simplicity  of 
fact,  Swedenborg  s  spiritual  eyes  were  unsealed,  and 
lie  saw,  not  souls  in  a  philosophical  manner,  but 
men  and  women  and  children  who  had  deceased, 
with  all  their  "  bodies,  parts,  and  passions,"  leading 
human  lives  characteristic  of  themselves.     He  saw 


I 

I 


196 


ILLUMINATION  OF  REASON 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  NATURALISM. 


197 


them  with  his  substantial  eyes.  In  time  he  saw- 
also  much  more,  namely,  the  gradual  great  altera- 
tions of  all  personality  in  the  heavens  and  the  hells  ; 
but  after  his  actual  eyes  were  opened,  he  saw  no 
human  entities,  but  they  were  all  men,  women,  and 
children,  who  were  the  more  substantively  human, 
the  more  men  and  women,  the  more  they  became 
angelic. 

Nothing  can  be  known  of  these  subjects  without 
revelation,  and  very  little  without  rational  revelation. 
Where  there  is  no  experience  there  is  no  knowledge, 
but  only  presumption  of  fact,  and  all  true  spiritual 
experience  is  in  one  kind  revelation  :  you  command 
it  by  no  existing  senses,  but  it  comes  to  you  from 
its  own  ground.  Immortality  is  not  demonstrable, 
save  by  immortal  sight  in  which  illuminated  reason 
sees.  It  is  therefore  clear  that  those  who  reject 
revelation  must  be  dubious  about  their  own  exist- 
ence hereafter.  By  the  spiritual  appearances 
recorded  in  history,  any  man  who  values  facts  at 
their  own  estimate,  may  know  that  men  and  women 
exist  after  death,  though  how  long  or  how  they 
exist  that  deponent  showeth  not.  But  this  is  a  kind 
of  revelation.  By  the  common  light  of  the  Christian 
religion  as  it  exists  in  the  churches,  men  may  aver 
human  immortality,  though  it  is  mingled  and 
sullied  with  the  grave.  This  also,  notwithstand- 
ing that  it  is  obscured,  is  revelation.  By  the 
opened  eye  of  the  New  Church,  immortality  is  seen 
immediately,  with  the  grounds  and  reasons  of  it,  as 
it  were  the  place  and  conditions,  in  the  existence  of 
the  Lord  and  the  nature  of  man.  This  is  indeed  reve- 
lation, and  all  subordinate  revealings  are  gathered 
into  its  certainty.  But  apart  from  these  sources, 
and  their  correspondents  in  the  old  collateral  reli- 


gions, which  are  themselves  decayed  revelations, 
nothing  is  knowable  or  conceivable  of  man  when  he 
dies  ;  as  how  could  it  be  where  there  are  no  facts, 
and  no  faculties  to  apprehend  them.  '^  Perhaps  it 
may  be  so,"  and  ''  perhaps  it  may  not  be  so,"  are  the 
"  be  all  and  the  end  all "  on  this  subject,  of  human 
reason  unassisted  by  divine.  To  any  serious  man 
who  considers  the  case,  there  is  God  s  showing  here 
that  His  revelation  exists. 


LIII. 

THE    PROSPECTS    OF    NATURALISM. 

Many  pious  persons  are  alarmed  at  the  present 
audacity  of  naturalism,  and  see  therein  a  grave 
danger  to  the  existence  of  religious  faith.  They 
may  be  reassured  by  the  following  considerations. 
In  the  first  place,  on  the  side  which  it  turns  towards 
practice,  and  we  may  say  political  life,  it  leads  out, 
as  we  have  shown  abundantly,  into  a  class  of  cruel 
deeds  and  scientific  despotisms  always  tending  to  in- 
crease on  opportunity,  and  then  to  retreat  on  pretexts 
before  the  public  eye  ;  and  parliament  and  police  in 
all  countries  are  already  on  its  track  here.  Even 
Royal  Commissions,  however  courtly  to  sins,  are 
preliminary  to  law  and  police.  Especially  it  is  a 
serious  check  to  naturalism  that  its  attempt  in  the 
sciences  of  life  shall  come  to  be  limited  by  the 
world's  conscience  embodied  in  penal  statutes.  And 
this  may  betoken  that  other  of  its  actual  ways 
will  be  watched  and  apprehended.  Then  secondly, 
its  methods  and  dogmas  ignore  life  except  as  a 
function  of  matter,  and  accept  the  visible  world  as 


198 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  NATURALISM, 


the  all  of  things  ;  leavmg  out  the  tiers  of  the  mind, 
and  all  excepting  the  senses,  even  when  working 
problems,  and  enacting  laws  and  denials,  with  facul- 
ties which  are  not  senses,  with  passions,  imagina- 
tions, and  domineering  desires,  each  handmaided  by 
its  own  intellectual  delusions.  In  this  omission, 
naturalism  is  taken  in  flank  by  modern  spiritism, 
and  indeed,  by  ancient  spiritual  history,  both  of 
which  consist  of  sensual  phenomena.  A  late 
German  writer  says  on  this  subject  :  *'  Spiritualism 
is  founded  on  authenticated  facts,  which  mortify 
denial,  and  thus  show  that  there  is  a  spiritual 
sphere  or  world  of  causes,  acting  independently  of 
the  phenomenal  sphere  of  natural  action.  Apart 
from  astute  counterfeits  and  malicious  deceptions, 
which  afford  no  argument,  sceptical  science  or 
materialism  by  these  manifestations  is  put  into  the 
awkward  position  of  desperately  denying,  without 
being  able  to  deny.  The  torment  natural  science 
feels  is  quite  excruciating.  It  is  the  contortion  of 
Lucifer  looked  upon  by  Christ.  The  manifestations 
are  material  facts,  in  which  an  intelliofent  or  free 
and  spontaneous  agency,  thus  of  human  spiritual 
beings,  at  a  slight  glance  is  discernible.  Unable  to 
deny  the  facts,  science  tries  all  sorts  of  impossible 
hypotheses  and  imaginary  fictions  to  explain  their 
physical  character  by  ordinary  causes."  ^  This  little 
war  contests  the  frontier  of  naturalism,  and  cripples 
its  forces ;  and  the  more  so  because  naturalism 
carries  the  conditions  of  the  enemy  in  its  own  vitals  ; 
for  its  dragon,  spiritism,  is  its  own  tapeworm  pro- 
jected from  within  ;  not  a  spontaneous  generation, 
but  the  very  will  and  body  of  spirits  clay  born  here. 
The  opposition,  however,  is  not  real,  and  it  may  be 

*  Sjnrititalism  and  its  Causes  and  Effects^  by  Baron  Dirckinck  Holmfeld. 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  NATURALISM, 


199 


foreseen  that  naturalism  will  some  day  make  its 
peace  with  spiritism,  and  so  endeavour  to  annex  the 
second  life  to  its  own  dominions,  and  to  carouse 
with  naturalism  beyond  the  grave  ;  and  when  that 
end  comes,  as  it  will  come,  magic  will  have  its  text- 
books and  laboratories,  and  be  pompously  reannoun- 
ced  from  professors'  chairs.  Swedenborg  has  already 
seen  this  issue  of  naturalism  in  the  spiritual  world. 
Again  it  seems  probable  that  penal  laws  may  have 
something  to  do  with  the  practical  side  of  this  later 
development.  We  shall  recur  to  the  subject  of 
spiritism  when  we  treat  of  the  brittleness  of  science 
further  on.  In  the  third  place,  those  who  are 
spiritually  minded,  and  can  be  instructed  respecting 
the  causes  which  are  at  work  within  this  momentous 
epoch,  will  find  that  a  new  dispensation  of  religion 
has  been  given  ;  a  new  outpouring  of  the  divine 
wisdom  suited  to  the  whole  duty  of  man,  a  new  in- 
flowing of  the  divine  love  into  human  faculties. 
This  implies  an  alteration  of  the  mental  climature  ; 
that  the  old  arctic  and  temperate  zones  of  man  are 
under  comparatively  tropical  conditions  as  regards 
their  vital  sun.  It  implies  that  freedom  to  grow 
and  to  do,  to  think  and  to  will,  is  increased.  That 
every  good  cause  is  manned  and  encouraged,  and 
every  evil  cause  inflamed,  by  the  new  influx  of  life 
into  all ;  for  "  He  causes  His  sun  to  shine  on  the 
just  and  on  the  unjust."  Thus  the  descending  truths 
of  the  incarnation  imply  upheavals  of  the  atheism 
opposed  to  them  ;  and  the  marshalling  of  the  forces 
of  both  for  war.  And  here  naturalism  is  besieged 
in  its  soul  by  a  perfect  account  of  itself  given  by  a 
power  which  is  not  its  own.  It  is  drawn  in  state- 
ment, and  its  ways  and  doctrines  are  written  out 
beforehand,  so  that  it  has  no  strategy  that  is  not 


200 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  NATURALISM, 


in  its  opponent's  hand.  It  is  the  field  of  an  influx 
which  not  only  serves  it  with  its  fresh  apparent  life, 
but  reveals  its  heart  to  the  religious  mind.  A 
counter- proof  of  this  is,  that  its  present  conceits 
have  been  long  foreseen,  as  any  reader  may  know 
by  consulting  Swedenborg  s  works.  A  fourth  thing 
is,  that  it  has  a  dead  church  to  prey  upon,  and  it 
seems  to  gain  great  extension  and  easy  victories 
here ;  indeed  to  have  important  allies  in  the 
rationalism  of  many  of  the  clergy.  But  here  its 
triumphs  threaten  nothing  that  is  not  already  perish- 
ing ;  and  a  mind  that  is  voluntarily  "  spouse  of  the 
worm  and  brother  of  the  clay,"  fills  a  permission  in  the 
divine  decree,  "'  Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead  "  :  it 
is  the  scavenger  of  evil  and  false  theologies,  and  eats 
them  up.  Fifthly,  the  honest  external  churches  in 
the  world  count  for  much  in  estimating  the  pros- 
pects of  naturalism.  These  are  not  the  dead  church 
excepting  in  so  far  as  the  men  in  them  reject  the 
new  light  of  heaven  ;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  they  will  in  the  main  reject  it.  The  out- 
ward foundations  of  religion,  the  national  churches 
including  their  denominations,  are  a  public  array 
upon  which  scientism  and  naturalism  make  no 
impression  ;  and  in  so  far  as  these  churches  are 
faithful  to  the  Lord,  and  inculcate  responsibility  of 
rulers  and  ruled  to  Him  in  daily  life  and  in  every 
administration  of  wealth  and  work,  they  will,  in 
the  end,  by  increasing  practical  good  from  above 
downwards  in  society,  enlist  the  body  of  the  work- 
ing men.  These  have  everything  to  fear  and  nothing 
to  gain  by  naturalism,  which  in  making  life  of  little 
account,  and  knowledge  of  much,  treads  at  once 
upon  the  cottages  of  this  world,  and  the  humble 
hopes    of  the   next.      Far    therefore    from  fearing 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  NATURALISM,         201 

naturalism  because  of  its  vaunts,  we  see  it  impri- 
soned in  stone  walls,  and  hear  it  as  a  voice  proceed- 
ing from  many  cells  ;  its  originalities  and  madnesses 
are  written  down  in  full  apocalypse  ;  it  is  inevitable 
and  expected  ;  and  rises  against  the  divine  natural 
Man  that  it  may  be  conquered,  and  placed  under  his 
feet. 

Prevailing  contempt  of  human  experime^it,  and  of 
the  powers  of  natural  substa7ice, — This  subject  should 
have  been  noticed  earlier,  but  the  occasion  for  it  be- 
longs to  the  day.  Experiment  on  living  animals  has 
been  condemned  in  these  pages;  and  poisoning  and 
pollution  of  animals  for  alleged  purposes  of  medical 
science,  has  been  signalized  as  wicked.  There  is 
however  a  set  of  experiments,  orderly;  if  rightly 
done,  harmless;  philosophical,  and  tending  directly 
to  human  uses,  which  is  on  record,  and  taken  no 
notice  of  by  the  violationists.  We  allude  to  "the 
proving  of  medicines,"  by  Hahnemann  and  his 
followers,  on  the  living  body.  They  and  their 
willing  patients  in  their  rightful  persons  have  been 
the  martyrs  of  a  new  science,  and  homoeopathy,  true 
drug  medicine,  is  the  result.  These  experimentalists 
have  done  themselves  no  harm,  have  committed  no 
suicides,  but  have  watched  the  vibrations  of  different 
drugs  upon  the  organism  throughout,  and  tabulated 
the  body  of  these  effects  in  human  forms  of  grouping. 
They  have  found  drugs  that  touch  precisely  chords 
within,  and  noted  the  symptoms  they  make,  and  from 
these  effects  have  constructed  a  system  of  correlates 
of  human  diseases,  and  a  book  of  exact  roads  to 
reach  and  cancel  them.  Long  experience  has  shewn 
that  they  are  not  wrong  in  the  correspondences 
indicated,  or  mistaken  in  the  cures  brought  about  by 
actively  inducing  them.     This  wealth  of  facts  elicited 


202  THE  PROSPECTS  OF  NATURALISM, 

directly  in  the  living  human  body,  for  the  body,  is 
vast  beyond  that  gained  from  irrelevant  animals  in 
the  troughs  of  the  violationists.  And  yet  they,  who 
crave  experiments  on  life,  ignore  all  this  experience  ; 
and  though  it  is  curative  knowledge,  they  go  after 
that  which,  on  their  own  shewing,  is  only  possibly 
and  inferentially  helpful,  and  cannot  be  proved  to 
have  commerce  with  cure.  This  is  contempt  of 
righteous  and  benign  experiments,  and  disqualifies 
the  ignorers  for  any  seat  in  the  colleges  of  nature. 

Furthermore,  the  action  of  infinitesimal  qualities 
of  drusrs.  an  action  as  substantiate  as  the  sun  at 
noonday,  is  despised  by  the  same  violent  school  ; 
and  here,  the  most  surprising  properties  of  matter, 
and  its  deepest  laws,  are  affronted  by  them.  That 
decillionth  and  centillionth  doses  of  drugs  should 
perform  the  solid  cures  they  do,  is  an  amplification 
of  material  powers  of  the  greatest  significance  for  the 
mind,  and  carries  matter  upwards,  changing  all  com- 
mon ideas  of  it :  shews  indeed  that  with  Hahnemann's 
heart  behind  it,  matter  is  as  benignant  thought, 
searches  the  body  for  rescues  and  good  works,  and 
carries  precision  of  help  to  otherwise  impossible 
recesses.  Bacon  says,  "the  subtlety  of  nature  ex- 
ceeds the  subtlety  of  the  human  understanding." 
But  the  violationist  understanding  denies  the  subtlety 
in  order  that  it  may  admit  nothing  which  is  superior 
to  its  selfhood.  Here  it  is  out  of  science, — Homo 
natures  negator — et  tunc  interior es.  It  is  also  out  of 
humanity,  treads  gentleness  under  foot,  and  makes 
war  with  the  lamb.  Vaccination  is  the  counter  ex- 
emplar of  evil  on  the  practical  side.  Instead  of 
combating  the  great  diseases,  cholera,  typhoid,  and  the 
like,  by  means  that  go  with  known  cure  homoeopath  i- 
cally  to  their  seats,  the  tendency,  and  now  the  pro- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  HUMAN  ORGANOLOGY.     203 

position  is  to  put  poison  after  poison  by  inoculation 
into  the  blood, — all  this,  we  are  told,  is  being  tried 
with  a  view  to  manifold  ultimate  compulsions — so 
that  mankind  from  infancy  shall  be  scarred  with 
every  damnation  lest  death  come  to  mind  or  body 
from  any  possible  absence  of  the  devil. 

Note  then  that  the  prevailing  school  relies  upon 
no  experiments  on  life,  but  those  that  are  violent, 
horrible,  second-hand,  and  fanciful ;  and  that  its 
admiration  of  the  laws  of  nature  and  the  powers  of 
matter  stops  short  wherever  these  become  admirable, 
rational,  and  divine.  Reckon  also  from  this  cause 
the  prospects  of  naturalism. 

LIV. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  HUMAN  ORGANOLOGY. 

Divine  and  natural  reasons  are  at  hand  to  prove 
the  cardinal  place  of  the  sciences  which  are  conver 
sant  about  the  body  of  man.  It  is  in  physical 
nature  the  head  and  front  of  the  proper  studies  of 
mankind.  It  is  the  most  difiScult  of  all,  because  it 
involves  every  faculty  in  the  pursuit ;  if  one  is  left 
out,  some  realm  of  the  human  frame  is  made  desert 
by  the  omission.  The  method  of  the  science  implies 
a  voluntary  coincidence  in  the  plan  of  the  scientific 
mind  with  the  will  and  purposes  of  the  Maker;  for 
those  purposes  become  the  uses  of  which  the  body  is 
the  express  organ.  According  as  these  uses  are 
seen,  there  is  daylight  in  the  firmament  of  physiology. 

As  a  subject  of  knowledge,  the  body  of  man  has 

not  only  a  human  soul  in  it,  but  a  divine  soul ;  for 

it  has  been  the  field  of  the  incarnation,  of  the  advent 

of  Jehovah  in  the  flesh  ;  and  the  divine  human  body 


204       THE  FUTURE  OF  HUMAN  ORGANOLOGY, 


thus  extant  upon  earth  is  the  ultimate  mediator 
between  God  and  man.  The  Lord  is  essential  man. 
Herein  the  human  form  is  holy  ground.  It  still 
remains  the  central  and  now  solar  object  of  physio- 
logy; divine  light  never  repugning,  but  regenerating, 
natural  light ;  and  inasmuch  as  physiology  is  the  top 
of  the  natural  sciences,  this  divine  entry  and  claim 
upon  it  amount  to  a  divine  reinstitution  and  consti- 
tution of  those  sciences. 

The  Divine  Man  when  in  Judaea,  went  forth  in 
uses  physiologically,  and  restored  the  decayed  and 
withered  functions  of  sick  and  lame  and  impotent 
human  bodies ;  and  knowing  what  was  in  man, 
became  the  physician  of  his  race,  and  his  first  advent 
was  accompanied  by  a  reconstitution  of  the  power  of 
health,  and  of  healing,  among  his  followers.  The 
creation  was  completed  in  Him,  and  the  divine 
image  in  the  human  form  was  in  all  practice  reasserted 
by  Him.  The  physiology  of  the  true  man  as 
separate  from  that  of  the  ruin  man,  is  henceforth 
the  physiology  of  the  Highest  in  man. 

In  the  Lord's  second  advent,  through  the  illumi- 
nated reason  of  Swedenborg,  where  He  taught  truths 
that  none  can  know  without  His  immediate  teaching, 
and  opened  faculties  which  He  only  can  open,  the 
preliminary  way  of  the  advent  lies  again  through  the 
human  body  ;  this  time  through  its  manifest  sciences 
of  anatomy  and  physiology,  whose  regeneration 
began  as  the  preparatory  rational  truths  passed 
through  them.  Why  this  was  is  now  plain.  For 
the  human  body  is  the  place,  symbol-book  and  ulti- 
mate of  the  soul  in  internal  knowledge  :  it  is  the 
expression  of  the  maximus  homo,  humanity,  and 
hence  of  the  divine  order  of  the  universes  of  heaven 
and  hell :  it  is  the  analoofue  of  all  arts  and  sciences. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  HUMAN  ORGANOLOGY,       205 

and  of  the  human  mind  and  society  on  earth ;  and 
writes  out  in  compact  shape  and  function  what  these 
are  in  forms  transcending  sensual  vision.  It  is  the 
earliest  assembly  and  meeting-place  for  man,  and  in- 
troduces him  to  himself  and  his  fellows  here  in  a  guise 
the  upw^ard  relationships  of  which  will  never  cease. 
Its  diseases  and  destructions  are  the  models  of  all 
punishments  under  spiritual  laws ;  its  elevations  the 
likenesses  of  all  supernal  commissions  and  inspira- 
tions. In  its  main  parts,  the  heart,  the  breath  or 
spirit,  and  the  like,  it  supplies  the  central  words  of 
the  Word,  and  sits  on  the  right  hand  of  revelation. 
It  is  the  scientific  key  to  the  communications  and 
circulations  of  good  and  evil  in  society,  which  on  the 
bad  side  has  its  spinal  and  great  sympathetic  nerves 
and  plexuses  of  evil,  whereby  lust  calls  to  lust,  crime 
evokes  crime,  leagues  of  wickedness  unknown  to  the 
wicked  are  sworn,  and  the  strands  of  sin  anticipate 
nature  and  death,  and  by  induction  adjoin  the  sym- 
pathetic fibres  of  pandemonium. 

Therefore  both  the  first  and  second  advents  con- 
cern the  human  body  and  its  sciences,  and  hence  the 
truth  and  conservation  of  those  sciences  is  a  special 
object  of  the  divine  regard  ;  and  its  motives  and  prin- 
ciples herein  have  been  announced  in  two  dispensa- 
tions. Practical  good  in  the  body  is  the  first  advent; 
practical  rational  truth,  newly  founding  and  com- 
manding the  good,  is  the  second.  The  salvation 
of  the  body  by  these  principles  is  the  last  reason  of 
the  existence  of  its  physiology. 

Here  we  see  in  plain  knowledge  the  reason  of  the 
special  assault  upon  these  human  sciences,  and  of 
the  attempt  to  tear  them  to  pieces,  and  throw  them 
to  the  beasts  to  devour.  We  see  why  violation  and 
its  suggestions  are  bent  to  make  an  abomination  of 


2o6       THE  FUTURE  OF  HUMAN  ORGANOLOGY, 

desolation  of  the  animal  kingdom,  and  to  drive  the 
destruction  upwards,  piece  after  piece,  through  the 
truths  of  the  human  form.  For  that  form  stands 
right  over  against  the  infernal  gates,  and  closes  in 
their  power.  It  so  stands  by  the  inhabitation  of 
divine  natural  truths  wnthin  the  organs  of  the  body 
itself,  which  is  thus  consciously  the  castle  of  the 
organic  images  and  resting-places  of  freewill,  and  the 
mundane  centre,  answering  to  the  Word,  of  the  science 
of  correspondences,  which  is  solar  in  the  intelligence 
of  the  new  humanity.  The  war,  therefore,  between 
physiology  and  its  violator  is  a  foreseen  war  on  one 
side,  and  a  necessary  war  on  both  sides,  and  the 
existence  of  religion  and  society  are  pledged  upon  its 

issues. 

But  the  increase  of  human  organology,  and  in 
general  of  the  sciences  of  the  human  form,  will  be  of 
slow  attainment,  for  even  in  a  regenerating  society, 
not  every  man  is  adequate  to  perceive  and  register 
organic  principles,  still  less  to  receive  the  illumina- 
tion which  alone  can  transfigure  this  knowledge,  and 
make  it  into  a  body  of  truths.     The  flesh  to  the 
fleshly  is  hard  to  be  thought  of  as  the  vessel  of  the 
spirit.     And  such  knowledge  will  less  be  written  in 
scientific  statements,  and  more  be  poured  forth  as  a 
general  spiritual  light  forbidding  and  denying  pro- 
fane research  and  inference  ;  whereby  the  field  will 
be  cleared  and  the   way  prepared   for  new   good. 
Moreover  w^e  may  here  discover   that  progress   of 
knowledge  in  the  usual  sense  is  a  delusion  of  the 
natural  man;  and  that  high   truths  especially  are 
o-iven  as  they  are  wanted,  through  high  instruments 
fitted   for   the  purpose;   that  they  are  not  in  the 
market  and  forum  of  mankind ;  and  that  there  are 
no  more  of  them  to  be  had  until  those  already  given 


THE  FUTURE  OF  HUMAN  ORGANOLOGY.       207 

have  been  used  adequately.  Also  that  such  use  of 
them  is  the  only  means  to  the  genius,  the  God-given 
eye,  which  sees  more.  And  this  supplies  a  criticism, 
not  an  unkindly  but  a  discerning  criticism,  of  those 
knowledges  in  which  natural  progress  is  possible, 
and  shows  that  if  unlimited  they  are  wildernesses  of 
facts  in  which  the  mind  loses  itself;  or  else  that 
they  become  truths  in  subserving  the  arts  which 
minister  to  the  natural  life ;  and  thus  limited,  loop 
on  as  justified  uses  to  the  outer  garments  of  the 
human  form. 


PART   III. 
A    NEW    CHURCH. 


LV. 


THE    CHURCH    MILITANT    IN    SCIENCE. 

Nothing  but  a  study  of  Swedenborg  s  works,  in 
which  a  thing  new  to  the  race  of  man,  namely,  a 
rational  revelation,  is  conveyed,  can  have  any  voice 
in  deciding  upon  their  contents.  They  besiege  and 
in  time  will  capture  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the 
devil,  and  hold  them  in  bonds ;  and  they  ask  for  no 
treaty  of  peace  in  the  meantime.  They  are  throw- 
ing their  bridges  over  now  into  the  hostile  cities  of 

science. 

The  New  Church,  the  New  Jerusalem,  is  con- 
strained to  occupy  this  position,  because  no  other 
church  can  do  so.  All  other  churches  are  possessed 
by  mythologies  which  do  not  belong  to  the  rational 
mind,  and  which  can  throw  over  no  bridge  into 
accordant  truths  of  nature.  There  is  nothing 
organic,  no  apprehensible  divine  truth  in  their 
tenets.  These  tenets  have  no  personal  authority 
either  of  the  Lord,  the  Word,  or  a  commissioned 
messenger,  but   are   the  outgrowth  of  the  always 


THE  CHURCH  MILITANT  IN  SCIENCE. 


209 


questionable  life  of  the  historical  church.     At  best 
they  are  the  formulas  of  public  opinion  about  divine 
things,  old  and  new.      Scripture  disowns  them  as 
superadditions.      They  are   not   theories,  still   less 
truths,  of  Scripture,  opening  the   mind   to   see   it 
rationally ;  but  things  apart,  settled  in  councils  by 
majorities  of  fanciful  and  imaginative  hierarchs,  in 
whom  the  last  lust  of  hierarchy  has  forced  doctrine 
into  shapes  most  suitable  for  the  ends  of  dominion. 
Obviously  they  are  unrelated  to  science;    when  it 
becomes  atheistic,  they  can  parry  none  of  its  attacks ; 
for  their  theism  is  as  unlikely  as  its  atheism.     Is  it 
more  likely  that  one  ''divine"  person  decreed  the 
death  of  another  to  save  mankind  in  their  sins  from 
their  sins,  than  that  there  is  no  God  at  all  ?    The 
existence  of  such  gods  would  curse  mankind,  as  the 
bare  creed  of  them  has  cursed  it.      Salvation  by 
faith  alone  would  obviously  do  the  same,  by  carry- 
ing all  evil  unconquered,  into  heaven.     From  such 
things  there  is  no  passage  into  the  daily  natural  life 
and  faculties  of  mankind  ;  they  have  no  regenerative 
power.     This  is  all  written  out  in  modern  history. 
The  Pope  of  Rome  sees   the  evils  of  the  present 
insurrection  of  science  against  God  and  His  Word, 
but  strikes  no  bolt  home ;  his  wrath  is  purely  of  his 
position ;  he  might  be  expected  to  be  very  angry  at 
such  free  winds  blowing  about  his  scarlet  infallibility, 
and  to  thunder  and  lighten  as  it  were  in  token  of 
the  second  coming  of  Jupiter  in  modern  civilization. 
But  he  does  not  know  that  true  science  is  indis- 
pensable in  work,  and  divine  in  origin;  and  that 
true  theology  must  be  able  to  throw  bridges  over 
into  it,  and  to  communicate  with  the  heart  of  its 
truths ;  and  that  if  there  is  no  such  theology  in  his 
churchy  it  must  be  sought  in  a  New  Church.     The 


0 


2 1  o        THE  CH  UR  CH  MILITANT  IN  SCIENCE. 

Protestant  churches  are  just  as  much  at  fault  in  the 
conflict  with  atheism  as  the  Papal  church  is  :  they 
have  the  same  mythology,  and  no  theology ;  the 
night  of  their  creeds  is  thick  with  the  wandering 
stars  of  irrationalism,  which  are  easily  put  out  by  the 
pursuivant  rationalisms  which  hawk  in  the  ecclesias- 
tical sky.  In  fact,  the  Protestant  churches  "  hold 
their  own  "  less  than  the  others,  composed  as  they  are 
of  free  bands  ;  they  abandon  doctrine  to  the  enemy, 
and  proclaim  its  unimportance ;  and  throw  over- 
board almost  anything  at  the  bidding  of  rationalism. 
At  best  they  are  arks  in  which  good  conduct  and 
human  virtue  are  acknowledged  to  be  right,  and 
where  they  bide  their  time  until  more  light,  ex- 
pected generally  out  of  natural  science  and  progress, 
comes. 

Doctrines  are  necessary. — A  word  here  concerning 
the  importance  of  doctrines.  In  regard  to  the  truths 
of  the  natural  w^orld,  the  difference  between  the 
savage  and  the  civilized  man  lies  very  much  in  the 
fact  that  the  savage  man  has  no  doctrines  of  nature, 
and  the  civilized  has  many.  And  the  more,  the  more 
exact,  and  the  more  commanding  in  the  faculties  the 
doctrines  are,  the  more  pow^erful  is  the  citizen,  and 
the  more  complete  the  material  civilization.  The 
doctrines  of  the  natural  world  are  the  truths  of  the 
physical  sciences.  They  come  from  careful  and 
extensive  observations  ;  these  suggest  laws  and  prin- 
ciples ;  gradually  they  form  an  order  corresponding 
to  wider  and  wider  tracts  of  natural  fact  and  opera- 
tion ;  and  at  length,  from  being  '^  scientifics,"  as 
Swedenborg  calls  them,  they  become  truths.  With- 
out such  truths  in  some  abundance,  man  inhabits 
only  the  lower  strata  of  nature  and  time,  and  is  even 
less  perfect  in  his  place  than  the  animal  creation. 


THE  CHURCH  MILITANT  IN  SCIENCE. 


211 


The  present  point  is,  that  doctrines  are  indispensable 
here  because  nature  is  essentially  an  order,  a  cosmos, 
and  compliance  with  the  laws  and  rules  of  that  order 
is  needful  to  participating  in  its  powers.    The  theory 
of  gravitation,  of  universal  attraction,  of  heat,  lidit 
electricity,  magnetism,  is  the  doctrine  of  those  sub- 
jects and  sciences  ;  and  by  means  of  their  doctrines, 
the  mind  holds  them  in  its  domain,  and  all  the  arts 
Avhich  embody  these  powers  or  expressions  of  nature, 
grow  in  proportion  as  the  theory  or  doctrine  is  true 
and  complete.     If  nature  were  a  great  vagary,  the 
converse  thing  would  be  to  make  the  best  of  it,  to 
pick  the  chaos  for  daily  morsels  as  a  chiffonier  picks 
up  his  bits,  and  not  to  think  beyond  each  meal.    Now 
the  question,  it  may  be  called  a  moot  question  at 
present,  of  the  possibility,  not  to  say  utility,  of  doc- 
trinal truth  in  the  matter  of  the  Word  of  God  and 
the  spiritual  world,  has,  as  in  the  case  of  nature,  to 
deal  simply  with  the  reality  of  both  these  realms.    If 
the  Word  is  but  Jewish  literature,  and  the  life  after 
death  moonshine,  clearly  no  doctrine  need  be  enter- 
tained about  them.     On  the  other  hand,  the  Word 
being  divine  because  of  a  divine  spiritual  sense  con- 
tained exactly  within  the  letter,  and  the  spiritual 
world  being  an  immeasurable  creation  which  receives 
us  all  sooner  or  later  into  its  bosom  ;  it  is  clear  that 
the  man,  whether  dignitary  or  humble  layman,  who 
has  no  definite  doctrine  about  the  Word,  no  sciences 
become  truths  here,  is  a  theological  savage ;  and  if 
he  admits  a  life  after  death,  but  ignores  all  the  means 
to  an  exact  knowledge  of  it,  he  is  voluntarily  a  spiri- 
tual savage.     Two  upper  realms  are  lost  to  him,  and 
his  only  participation  in  them  is,  that  being  in  them- 
selves all  powerful  and  pervasive,  they  are  an  atmo- 
sphere which,  unconsciously  to  himself,  keeps  his 


/ 


212 


THE  CHURCH  MILITANT  IN  SCIENCE. 


mind    alive;     though   as    exactitudes   of    number, 
weight  and  measure  they  are  not  apprehensible  to 

his  reason. 

Doctrinals  then  are  the  indispensable  readers  of 
all  reality,  and  to  say  that  they  are  not  important  in 
any  subject,  is  to  say  that  that  subject  is  artificial, 
imaginary  and  unreal.  This  unreality  in  regard  to 
truths  is  the  state  of  the  churches  now  on  earth. 
They  contain  no  sciences  of  their  own  subject  matter, 
viz.,  the  Word,  and  the  spiritual  life  here  and  here- 
after; none,  that  is  to  say,  equivalent  to  the  physical 
and  mathematical  sciences;  they  inhabit  the  letter,  and 
read  the  burial  service,  and  criticism  meets  them  in  the 
one,  and  scepticism  at  the  other  ;  and  in  their  defeat 
they  retreat  into  authoritative  rites  and  vestments, 
and  disappear  from  their  express  world  of  regenera- 
tive duty  as  the  privileged  *^  mystical  body  of 
Christ ; "  and  a  cloud  of  fancied  uniformity  shapes 
itself  into  a  shelter  for  them  at  the  end  of  the  day. 

The  idea  of  a  church  militant  is  abandoned  here  ; 
and  except  in  outward  action  and  opposition  of  my 
church  against  thy  church,  no  spiritual  warfare  is 
waged.  Rome  is  not  militant,  but  sitting  still  and 
holding  to  her  seat,  feeding  upon  converts,  and  not 
upon  the  daily  divine  bread  of  regeneration,— gorged 
with  outward  things.  She  eats  peers  and  incomes, 
and  is  satisfied.  Protestantism  is  not  militant,  but 
cedin^"  one  province  of  thought  after  another  to 
inimical  naturalism.  The  reason  is  that  neither  of 
these  old  churches  has  any  true  doctrines  left.  For 
true  doctrines  are  the  weapons  of  all  spiritual  war  ; 
as  in  physics  they  are  the  tools  of  all  mental  com- 
mand over  nature.  In  each  case  they  are  the  instru- 
ments of  instruments,  and  prolong  intelligence  in 
unexpected  reaches   through   the   frames   of    their 


THE  CHURCH  MILITANT  IN  SCIENCE.       2 13 

respective  worlds.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  true  doc- 
trine of  the  Lord  as  an  incarnate  divine  man,  the 
doctrine  of  the  divine  humanity,  from  above  meets 
atheism,  and  beats  it  down,  and  step  by  step  claims 
the  creation  and  its  sciences.  So  the  true  doctrine 
of  the  Word,  that  it  is  the  Lord's  divine  voice, 
celestial  in  the  supreme  heaven,  spiritual  in  the 
spiritual  heaven,  and  a  natural  letter  on  the  earth, 
meets  scepticism,  and  blocks  his  passage  to  holy 
ground.  And  again,  the  true  doctrine  of  the  spiritual 
Avorld,  that  it  is  the  Lord's  love  and  wisdom  creative 
of,  and  ranging  through,  planes  or  universes  of  repre- 
sentative and  recipient  forms;  and  that  in  its  order 
there  are  many  mansions,  and  a  characteristic  room 
for  every  character;  and  that  the  death  of  the 
mortal  body  introduces  the  man  or  woman  thither 
at  once  ;  this  true  doctrine  meets  the  sceptic  at  the 
grave,  and  stops  his  dominion  there.  Truly  atheist, 
critic,  and  Sadducee  are  not  abolished,  because  they 
are  freewills,  and  their  thought  flows  out  of  their 
Avill,  but  they  are  fought  against,  which  is  what  a 
church  has  to  do,  and  fought  against  with  statements 
so  organic,  so  powerful,  so  experimental,  and  so  long, 
the  immortal  loves  and  lives  of  the  human  race 
standing  behind  like  Teuton  women  in  a  second 
array,  and  urging  on,  that  the  opposing  forces  are 
carried  away  as  in  a  river  by  divine  truths  pour- 
ing through  their  doctrinal  forms. 

Such  doctrinal  combat  was  impossible  until  the 
illumination  of  Swedenborg  furnished  the  weapons 
of  war.  The  upper  sphere  of  all  minds  was  invaded 
by  the  lower.  Plainly,  the  sanity  of  man,  and  his 
good  conduct,  depend  upon  subordination  in  himself. 
He  is  created  in  degrees  or  planes  of  power  and 
nature.     These  are  to  press  from  above  downwards 


214 


ANTHROPOLOGY, 


ANTHROPOLOGY, 


215 


I 


that  his  order  and  equilibrium  may  exist.  Take  off 
the  real  pressure  of  the  upper  plane  where  God 
abides  with  man,  and  the  lower  degrees  are  in 
immediate  insurrection.  They  expand,  and  to  a 
permitted  extent  fill  the  vacant  space  of  faculties. 
The  man  explodes.  In  our  time  we  have  seen  him 
explode  nationally,  from  want  of  the  almighty 
pressure  upon  his  mad  free-will.  The  same  thing  is 
visible  individually  all  around  us,  and  is  according  to 
the  most  ordinary  laws  of  statics.  Nothing  but 
combat  from  above,  the  new  heavens  bowed  down, 
and  coming  nearer  to  the  earthly  ground,  coming 
nearer  in  stupendous  organic  doctrinals,  can  reduce 
mankind  to  order,  and  restore  the  lost  balance  of  the 
states. 


LVI. 

THE   ANCIENT    CHURCHES   ENTER   SCIENCE  AND    COMMAND 

ANTHROPOLOGY. 

It  is  necessary  now  to  give  a  brief  summary  of  the 
doctrinal  and  real  informations  which  proceed  thus 
militant  out  of  the  writino^s  of  Swedenboro-.  This 
has  often  been  done  before  in  a  masterly  manner  by 
other  expositors.  It  is  attempted  humbly  here  with 
perhaps  the  new  end  of  showing  that  the  statements 
of  Swedenborg,  unlike  those  of  the  first  Christian 
churches,  meet  and  front  the  case  of  science,  feed 
honest  science  with  true  wholesome  food,  and  rebuke 
wicked  sciences  with  adequate  power.  Also  that 
those  statements  are  experimental,  authoritative  by 
personal  claim  and  self-evidence  afterwards,  so  doc- 
trinally  true  that  they  stoop  down  from  the  highest 


heaven  of  the  duties  of  men  and  women  to  the  soles 
of  the  feet  of  physics  without  a  tremor  in  the  divine 
curve  ;  and  so  organic  that  the  undoubted  reality  of 
nature  meets  here  a  loving  but  greater  reality  for 
the  man  and  his  soul ;  the  end  being  that  for  religion 
the  life  here  and  the  life  hereafter  are  one  life,  one 
duty,  and  one  world. 

Three  human  natures. — And  first,  why  was 
Swedenborg  needed  ?  There  have  been  several 
divinely  established  churches  on  the  eartli ;  and 
each,  by  its  own  selfishness,  its  self-love  actuate 
against  the  higher  love  within  it,  has  perverted  itself, 
and  come  gradually  to  an  end.  This  is  an  organic 
process  which  we  see  also  in  operation  now :  the 
Lyellian  doctrine  helps  us  here.  The  first  church 
was  called  Adam,  a  celestial  church,  a  church  of  love 
and  its  divine  inspiration,  a  church  not  of  intellect 
but  of  the  affections  and  perceptions  of  love.  It 
knew  God  and  nature  as  well  as  a  little  child  knows 
the  father  and  the  home.  Its  declension  is  signal- 
ized in  the  fall,  in  Cain,  in  all  the  proper  names, 
each  definitely  significant,  from  Adam  to  Noah, 
when  its  extinction  was  typified  by  the  flood,  lusts 
and  direful  persuasions  w^orse  than  falsities  destroyed 
the  first  human  nature,  the  first  church,  Adam. 
The  word  orofanic  must  often  be  used  here,  for  the 
end  assigned  :  and  the  above  is  an  organic  statement 
corresponding  to  innocence  and  infancy,  and  parallel 
with  childhood  and  its  gradual  decline  before  the 
onward  way  of  the  actual  and  hereditary  will. 

The  second  human  nature,  quite  different  from  the 
first,  is  from  Noah  to  Abraham,  the  second  or  spiri- 
tual church.  In  this  church  love  audits  perceptions 
as  '*  very  good,"  did  not  exist ;  they  were  no  longer 
guides,  but  had  been  desperately  bad  masters  over  a 


2l6 


ANTHROPOLOG  K 


ANTHROPOLOG  V. 


217 


I] 


fallen  race  :  the  lioflit  of  celestial  truth  which  had 
once  shone  from  them  was  extinguished.  The  first 
freewill  was  destroyed,  being  drowned  in  its  own 
insanities.  The  flood  typifies  its  devastation.  The 
Noahtic  churches  reach  from  Noah  to  Abraham. 
That  portion  of  the  Word  which  treats  of  the 
Adamic  and  Noahtic  dispensations  is  written  by 
correspondences  typifying  spiritual  things,  and  is  not 
historical.  In  the  Noahtic  church  a  renmant  of  the 
first  human  nature  was  preserved ;  all  the  clean 
creatures  remaining  of  it  went  in  pairs  into  the  ark 
w^th  the  humanity  called  Noah ;  and  the  Lord 
created  to  man  a  separate  intellect  with  a  faculty 
of  conscience  therein,  to  perceive  truths  by  an  intel- 
lectual way,  the  affectional  way  being  destroyed,  and 
thus  to  guide  mankind  from  the  side  of  truth,  when 
the  side  of  good  and  love  could  no  longer  avail. 
The  rainbow  set  in  the  clouds,  with  its  prism  of 
distinctions,  is  the  correspondence  on  high  of  that 
guiding  and  promising  intellect.  It  had  to  beat 
down  the  reign  of  lusts,  which  had  suffocated  the 
first  faculty  of  perception ;  and  its  promise  and 
covenant  was,  that  man  should  no  longer  be  drowned 
in  the  former  evils.  This  was  the  spiritual  church. 
The  names  from  Noah  to  Abraham  are  its  exact 
nations,  peoples,  and  epochs.  It  was  a  divinely 
organic  conscience  in  the  race ;  a  vast  edifice  of 
intellectual  light,  the  stones  of  which  were  corre- 
spondences, whereby  all  inward  things  were  sym- 
bolized and  arranofed  for  the  hiofhest  human  uses. 
Hereby  it  had  power;  and  as  nature  now  is  laid 
hold  of  by  our  science,  so  nature  yielded  then  to  the 
hand  of  the  revealed  science  of  the  early  men,  the 
science  of  correspondences.  Truth  was  induced  by 
representative  forms,  and  ran  with  its  mighty  force 


into  arts  and  states  and  cities.  This  was  accom- 
plished through  the  ancient  Word,  now  lost,  by 
which  the  Lord  mediated  with  his  peoples.  That 
Word  was  written  by  pure  correspondences,  the  first 
eleven  chapters  of  Genesis  being  a  part  of  it. 

In  all  this,  reality  and  organic  verity,  the  battle 
of  the  truths  of  a  conscience  spiritually  given 
against  evil  and  its  lusts,  are  paramount ;  there  is 
no  place  for  clerical  mystery  ;  but  a  record  of  the 
passage  of  human  nature  through  a  series  of  strictly 
organic  developments  tending  and  pointing  to  the 
present  time.  As  the  elder  faculties  are  destroyed, 
new  faculties  are  created,  new  forms  of  intellect,  a 
new  conscience,  and  the  restoration  and  rebuilding 
of  the  ruin,  man,  is  accomplished  in  ways  worthy  of 
the  Divine  reason.  It  is  not  a  mythological  theme, 
but  one  of  transcendent  history  in  accord  with  the 
sore  needs  of  the  race.  It  has  left  behind  it  Imo-e 
spiritual  fossils,  which  are  as  capable  of  study  since 
Swedenborg,  as  the  mammoths  and  mastodons  of 
the  geological  strata. 

This  second,  or  spiritual,  church  also  perished 
through  a  long  line  of  declensions,  by  violating  all 
the  truths  it  knew,  and  perverting  the  real  power 
of  all  its  correspondences  :  it  perished  into  ecclesias- 
tical magic,  which  is  the  abuse  of  divine  forms  and 
symbols ;  and  into  infernal  priesthoods.  The  in- 
ward command  of  the  truths  of  the  spiritual  con- 
science through  its  symbols  was  no  longer  recog- 
nized by  mankind ;  and  the  name  of  God  was 
lost. 

Ethnology  has  much  to  gain  from  a  consideration 
of  the  writings  of  Swedenborg.  They  reveal  the 
strong  and  the  weak  points  of  existing  views  of  the 
races   of  mankind.     They  proclaim  by  a   spiritual 


^ 


2l8 


ANTHROPOLOG  K 


experience   that   the   first  men   created  were  in   a 
simple  and  humble  state,  but  with  hearts  and  heart 
perceptions   capable    of   receiving   bj/    regeneration 
celestial  love  ;  hearts  into  which  heaven  then  opened 
down,  and  which  thus  conjoined  them  with  heaven. 
Adam  is  the  most  ancient  or  celestial  Church  ;  the 
creation  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  the  creation 
of  the  spiritual  man  on  the  way  to  the  celestial ;  the 
creation  of  the  second  chapter  is  of  the  celestial  man 
himself.     '*  The  celestial  man  is  the  seventh  day  on 
which  the  Lord  rested  "  (Swedenborg).     The  pro- 
cess involves  the  Prse-Adamite  races,  whose  condition 
was  seen  by   Swedenborg   in   the  spiritual  world, 
where  all  men  and  women  are  extant.     Of  these, 
those  who  by  their  own  resistance,  were  not  able  to 
be  raised  into  the  state,  Adam,  are  a  j)oor  and  feeble 
population  of  aboriginals,  who  refused  to  advance. 
They  did  not  fall,  but  they  would  not  rise  ;  and  it  is 
an  almighty  law  that  God  cannot  regenerate  those 
who  will  not  be  regenerated  ;  regeneration  must  be 
every  man's  own  act  and  deed,  and  herein  God  does 
it  for  him  ;  having  so  created  him  that  he  must  do 
it  as  of  himself,  acknowledging  afterwards  that  it  is 
of  God.     There  are  then  here  three  different  human 
natures   in   this   most  ancient  people  :    those  who 
would   not   be   regenerated,    and    remained   at  the 
bottom  of  the  scale  :  those  who  were  regenerated, 
and    became    Adam,    became    celestial    men    and 
women  ;  and  thirdly,  the  degenerate  descendants  of 
the  celestial  church,  who  again  fell  to  the  bottom 
of  their  nature,  and  their  God-given  faculties  were 
there   suffocated   in   their   lusts.      These   positions 
contain  ideas  that  cannot  be  neglected  by  ethno- 
logical science,  and  they  communicate  with  physio- 
logy, and  its  account  of  the  procession  and  changes 


ANTHROPOLOG  Y, 


219 


of  organisms  before  the  foetal  man  becomes  outward 
or  is  born. 

Passing  to  the  Noah  tic  or  spiritual  church,  we 
have  also  three  human  natures  included,  namely,  of 
those  who  refused  to  be  regenerated  into  it ;  of 
those  who  did  attain  it ;  and  of  those  who  fell  from 
it  again  into  atheism  and  mal-creation,  and  lost 
God  into  gods.  These  distinctions,  though  unrecog- 
nized, are  scientifically  true  in  all  conditions  of  man- 
kind. In  the  long  state  called  Noahtic  by  Sweden- 
borg, the  race  was  brought  out  of  Adam  as  an 
embryo  remnant  out  of  a  dead  mother,  was  saved 
from  suffocation  by  birth,  and  was  made  to  breathe 
the  outer  air  of  truth  and  liberty,  which  corresponds 
to  the  creation  of  the  intellect,  and  of  all  motive 
from  without.  This  is  organic,  historic  human 
physiology. 

When  the  first  or  celestial  church  perished, 
founded  as  it  was  upon  primeval  conditions  of  im- 
mediate love  from  God  and  light  from  God,  it  left 
no  remains  to  attest  its  peculiar  nature ;  for  it  had 
not  written  or  built,  but  had  lived.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  second  church,  or  the  church  of  the 
primordial  correspondential  intellect,  the  church  that 
understood  the  correspondences  in  all  things  which 
the  first  church  had  perceived,  left  great  ruins  in 
many  countries.  It  had  been  spread  over  Asia  and 
extended  to  Egypt,  and  its  mental  kingdoms  and 
provinces  were  wide  and  distinct.  Egypt,  Babylon, 
and  Assyria,  with  their  legends,  sculptures,  temples, 
and  the  strange  human  nature  which  all  these  be- 
token, mark  the  lapse  of  this  second  church  throuofh 
dehnite  organic  stages,  into  idolatry,  decay,  and 
extinction.  The  science  of  correspondences  was  lost 
out  of  the  human  mind  when. this  church  perished. 


22Q 


ANTHROPOLOGY, 


ACCORD  OF  GEOLOGY, 


221 


' 


The  tenure  of  its  mighty  endowment  sustained 
momentaneously  by  the  Divine  influx,  had  lain  only 
in  the  fidelity  of  its  conscience,  and  when  this  was 
voided,  the  collapse  and  idolatrous  disgrace  of  its 
intellect  were  consummated. 

The  third  church  had  a  second  Word  of  God  con- 
ferred upon  it  in  the  Jewish  religion,  a  Word 
organically  adequate  to  its  peculiar  wants.  It  was 
a  church  of  natural  forms,  rites,  and  ceremonies 
divinely  instituted,  the  forms  corresponding  to  the 
order  and  laws  of  heaven,  by  the  dwelling  within 
which  obediently,  Jehovah  was  present  to  this  out- 
Avard  representative  of  a  church,  and  in  His  Word, 
and  in  His  temple,  guided  the  peculiar  people 
through  a  natural  organic  ecclesiasticism.  The 
capacity  that  forms  possess  of  being  inhabited  by 
souls  when  they  are  fit  to  be  so  inhabited,  has  been 
dwelt  upon  before;  it  is  so  little  apprehended  by 
naturalists  now,  that  they  must  open  a  new  mind  in 
themselves  in  order  to  understand  it ;  but  it  lies  at 
the  basis  of  the  comprehension  of  the  Jewish  dis- 
pensation ;  as  also  it  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  nature, 
and  of  all  physiology.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  when 
a  divine  organism  of  forms  is  once  instituted,  in 
worship,  in  rite  and  ceremonial,  and  in  the  Word, 
the  Divinity  is  present  in  that  form  as  a  soul  in  its 
body.  The  Jews,  among  whom  that  form  now  was, 
spoke  with  God  through  its  faces,  and  God  was 
naturally  with  them.  They  understood  nothing  of 
the  lost  science  of  correspondences,  but  they  lived  in 
and  under  the  divine  natural  power  of  the  cor- 
respondences themselves.  They  inhabited  and  re- 
spired external  nature,  and  were  limited  by  it,  and 
obedience  then  was  the  whole  duty  of  this  third 
manner  of  man. 


.  The  beginning  of  this  representation  of  a  church 
was  in  the  revelation  of  Jehovah  to  Abraham,  as  the 
one  I  AM ;  the  end  of  it  was  in  the  incarnation  of 
Jehovah  in  Jesus  Christ.  From  the  first  it  swerved 
from  obedience  into  stiffheckedness ;  patriarchs  and 
judges,  priests  and  kings,  prosperity  and  punish- 
ment, the  voices  of  prophets,  did  not  hold  it  up  ;  and 
it  was  desecrated  and  devastated  from  head  to  foot 
by  a  third  aggression  of  self  love,  as  the  two  former 
churches  liad  been  by  a  first  and  a  second.  It  came 
to  its  end. 

We  seem  thus  to  be  reading  a  human  accord  of 
the  epochs  of  the  history  of  the  planet.  All  is 
organic  here.  Palaeology  has  food  for  new  informa- 
tions ;  and  geology  in  its  record  runs  towards  mea- 
suring its  pregnant  discoveries  w^ith  the  several 
organic  spiritual  constitutions  which  one  after  the 
other,  in  linked  succession,  have  appeared  in  man- 
kind, and  disappeared.  In  each  separate  case,  three 
different  human  natures  are  involved.  It  may 
be  that  the  New  Church  will  discover  corre- 
spondentially,  that  the  physical  history  of  our 
planet  with  its  periods,  writes  out  also  the  tablets 
and  frescoes  of  the  wars  of  Jehovah  with  mankind, 
and  characterizes  their  several  exact  rejections  of  the 
organic  love  and  light  with  which  he  has  endowed 
those  great  faculties  here  called  churches  in  their 
order. 

LVII. 

ACCORD    OF    GEOLOGY. 

The   naturalist   may  put   in   a   plea   that   these 
events   have    been    transacted    in    late    geological 


222 


ACCORD  OF  GEOLOGY. 


-^1 


III 


>ii 


epochs,  and  comprise  but  a  small  space  of  time. 
This  may,  or  may  not,  be  true,  and  is  not  im- 
portant yet  to  determine.  For  inasmuch  as  man  is 
the  natural  end  or  final  cause  of  creation,  and  salva- 
tion or  mans  angelhood  the  end  of  man,  all  the 
fluxion  of  form  and  substance  and  event  from  the 
be^nnning  is  organically  poured  from  one  of  these 
ends  to  the  other,  and  the  character  of  the  function 
is  written  out  upon  each  nature  as  it  passes ;  the 
world  being  prepared  from  the  first  for  perpetual 
conservation  of  its  own  ends,  and  for  perpetual  war 
with  destruction  from  inevitable  freewills  and  their 
spiritual  allies  and  empires.  Therefore  the  length  of 
time,  the  duration  of  periods,  and  the  mistiness  of 
epochs,  is  a  small  matter  when  the  almighty  end  is 
seen :  geological  time  with  whatever  millions  of 
years  is  in  the  close  grasp  of  theological  time, 
however  long  this  planet  can  be  reckoned  back  on 
the  clocks  of  older  planets,  all  time  has  but  existed 
from  the  Lord  Jehovah  to  the  Lord  Christ,  and  now 
to  His  second  coming,  as  the  One  Lord  of  all.  His 
love,  through  heaven  first,  and  then  witli  humanity 
in  His  mercy's  arms  back  to  heaven,  is  the  Creation 
as  well  as  the  Creator  and  Eedeemer.  In  organic 
fact,  He  is  all  in  all. 

In  hi«*h  illustration  of  this  subject,  we  cite  a 
passage  on  the  ends  of  creation  from  The  Divine 
Providence  of  Swedenborg.  ''Heaven  is  divided 
into  as  many  societies  as  there  are  organs,  viscera, 
and  members  in  a  man ;  and  in  these  no  one  part 
can  have  any  other  place  than  its  own.  Since 
therefore  angels  are  such  parts  in  the  divine  celestial 
man,  and  none  are  made  angels  but  such  as  have 
been  men  in  the  world,  it  follows,  that  the  man  who 
suffers  himself  to  be  led  to  heaven  is  continually 


ACCORD  OF  GEOLOGY. 


223 


prepared  by  tlie  Lord  for  his  particular  place,  which 
is  done  by  such  an  aflfection  of  goodness  and  truth 
as  corresponds  to  it :  and  into  this  his  proper vplace 
every  man  is  enrolled  after  his  departure  out  of  the 
world.  Tliis  is  the  inmost  purpose  of  the  Divine 
Providence  concerning  heaven. 

''But  the  man  who  does  not  suflfer  himself  to  be 
led  to  and  enrolled  in  heaven,  is  prepared  for  his 
place  in  hell ;  for  a  man  from  himself  continually 
tends  to  the  lowest  hell,  but  is  continually  withheld 
by  the  Lord;  and  he  who  cannot  be  withheld  is 
prepared  for  a  certain  place  there,  in  which  he  is 
also  enrolled  immediately  after  his  departure  out  of 
the  world.  This  place  is  opposite  to  a  certain  place 
in  heaven,  for  hell  is  in  opposition  to  heaven. 
Therefore  as  a  man  angel,  according  to  the  aflfection 
of  good  and  truth,  has  his  place  assigned  him  in 
heaven,  so  a  man  devil,  according  to  the  affection  of 
evil  and  falsity,  has  his  place  assigned  him  in  hell ; 
for  two  opposites  disposed  in  a  similar  situation 
against  each  other,  are  held  in  connexion.  This  is 
the  inmost  purpose  of  the  Divine  Providence  con- 
cerninof  hell." 

Now  in  view  of  these  two  designs,  which  must 
as  fairly  be  taken  for  granted  as  that  there  is  a 
supreme  Lord,  and  that  good  is  good  to  Him,  and 
evil  is  evil,  it  is  obvious  that  His  creation  in  all  its 
stages  since  the  beginning  is  with  express  reference 
to  man ;  and  that  if  millions  of  ages  existed  before 
man  appeared,  the  purpose  that  ran  through  them  is 
only  the  more  persistent  for  its  length  of  way.  If 
heaven,  or  hell,  are  prepared  for  every  man,  they 
exist  as  divine  foundations  to  receive  him.  Thus 
Swedenborg  says  that  it  has  been  given  him  to  per- 
ceive that  heaven  is  so  immense  that  it  cannot  be 


?24 


ACCORD  OF  GEOLOGY. 


% 


^1 


filled  to  eternity.     It  stands  ready  in  anticipation  of 
continual  inmates.      And  ^'in  my  Father's  house," 
says  the   Lord,   "are  many  mansions."     Applying 
this  to  nature,  it  also  has  stood  ready  from  the  be- 
ginning.     In  its  events   and   forms,   it   represents 
both  heaven  and  hell,  and  corresponds  generally  to 
the  inhabitants  who  journey  across  it  voluntarily  to 
one  or  the  other.     It  corresponds  thus  from  its  first 
inception.     And  therefore  in  tracing  the  successive 
epochs,  and  floras  and  faunas  of  the  planet,  human 
correspondence  permeates  them  just  as  if  man  were 
present,  which  he  is  indeed  in  the  creative  potency. 
Evil    forms    are    created    as   the    indications,    and 
reactions,  and  prisons  of  evil.     It  is  inevitable  from 
the   freewill   of  man,   and    they  are    ready  for   it. 
Were  there  no  design,  but  weltering  of  protoplasm 
to  hysteroplasm,  to  and  fro,  this  would  be  absurd  ; 
but  where  there  is  divine  design,  it  is  irrefutable. 
It   is    but  the  preparation  of  the  earth  for  man. 
Every   government   that   founds   a   colony,    and   a 
planet  is  a  colony,  works  on  the  same  lines  of  fore- 
thought.     Its   possession   of  the   land   where   the 
future  colony  is  to  be,  is  first  a  possession  by  its 
own  laws,  and  its  penal  laws  are  among  them.    And 
it  does  not  wait  for  successive  criminals  and  build  a 
jail  after  they  are  convicted,  but  a  jail  of  prudent 
dimensions    is    provided     beforehand.       The    proe- 
civic   country  is  full  of  rights  and  privileges  and 
difficulties  before  a  man  steps  upon  it,  or  there  would 
be   no  order  when   he   arrives.      Bare   annexation 
takes  out  laws  and  statutes  as  it  were  preliminary 
creations.     And  so  nature  under  the  government  of 
God  is  prepared  in  her  first  forms  for  all  the  con- 
tino^encies  of  mankind. 


SOCIAL  DECLENSION  IN  BOTH  WORLDS,    225 

LVIII. 

SOCIAL    DECLENSION    COINCIDENT    IN    THIS    WORLD 

AND    THE    OTHER. 

Before  speaking  of  the  fourth  human  nature,  the 
Divine  Humanity,  it  is  necessary  to  say  something 
of  the  organic  psychological  effect  of  the  decline  and 
decay  of  these  great  churches  and  societies  upon 
the  earth.     This  effect  follows  laws  as  exact  and 
inevitable  as  the  ascertained  laws  of  matter;  nay, 
more  inevitable,  because  the  laws  or  habits  of  matter 
can  clearly  be  suspended  or  lifted  up  when  a  greater 
than  matter  is  here,  which  is  not  often  the  case  yet  ; 
whereas    these    spiritual    laws    depend    upon    the 
inalienable   right   of  freewill   to   do  w^rong,  which 
God  Himself  never  takes  away.     He  is  greater  than 
any  freewill,  but  freewill  is  man,  and  God  does  not 
infringe  him.     Now  whenever  a  church,  or  a  divine 
dispensation  in  our  race,  is  declining,  the  declension 
takes   place   in   two  ways  which   always   coincide. 
The  race  becomes  more  abandoned  and  wicked  here 
on  earth.     The  race  becomes  also  more  vile  in  the 
spiritual  world.      How?     Simply  by  the   race  on 
earth   dying,    and    being   taken   into   the   spiritual 
world,   and   colonizing    it.      Death   alters   nothing 
organically,  but  adds  the  scope  and  practice  of  a 
higher  world  of  powers  for  good  and  evil.     So  it  is 
that  the  millions  who  die  in  ages  when  the  race  is 
declining  from   good  towards  evil  are  continually 
poured  into  the  spiritual  world.     Every  deathbed  is 
a  bhthbed  there. 


.'•'I 


226    INDIVIDUAL  AND  GENERAL  JUDGMENT 


LIX. 

INDIVIDUAL   AND    GENERAL    JUDGMENT   TAKES    PLACE 
IN    THE    SPIRITUAL   WORLD. 

The  natural  world  peoples  the  spiritual, — Further- 
more, by  organic  fact,  spiritual  similars  are  together 
as  soul  and  body  are  together.  For  instance,  this 
London  which  sends  its  millions  up  there  from 
generation  to  generation,  necessarily  and  organically 
has  above  it  a  spiritual  London  continually  re- 
plenished with  its  departed  inhabitants,  abiding 
there  for  a  longer  or  shorter  period  of  our  time,  of 
their  states,  until  their  onward  march  is  decreed  by 
the  all-disposer.  For  comparatively  few  can  undergo 
at  once  the  vast  change  from  earth  to  heaven,  or 
from  earth  to  hell.  Thus  the  spiritual  world  is  in 
organic  communication  with  the  natural  world,  and 
lies  above  it  as  a  plane  of  divine  influx.  In  all  the 
three  cases  adduced  above,  of  the  Adamic,  Noahtic, 
and  Israelitish  Churches  severally,  the  spiritual 
world  above  each,  had  been  filling  almost  from  the 
commencement  with  evil  men  and  women  dying 
hence;  it  was  a  vast  union  of  infernal  empires 
obstructing  the  divine  light  and  heat,  and  pressing 
down  the  earth  into  helpless  subjection  to  its  power; 
reproducing  in  what  the  Scripture  calls  the  heavens, 
the  Babylons  and  Assyrias  and  Egypts  of  the 
lower  sphere.  The  first  pressure  is  always  against 
freewill,  the  person  in  the  man.  Under  that  pres- 
sure, mankind  could  no  longer  think  and  act  freely, 
but  were  coerced  by  organic  relationship  of  power, 
by  breach  of  their  frontiers,  by  possession  and  obses- 


TAKES  PLACE  IN  THE  SPIRITUAL   WORLD,   227 

sion,  to  think  and  act  from  hell.  Whenever  free- 
will begins  to  waver  so,  man  is  at  stake,  and  God  is 
at  hand.  Dignus  vindice  nodus.  He  bows  the 
heavens,  and  comes  closer  with  insupportable  influx. 
The  poor  obscure  simple  good  are  refilled  with  life. 
A  divine  judgment  takes  place.  The  good  are 
formed  into  fresh  nations  and  peoples,  into  great 
accordant  societies,  and  brought  heavenwards.  The 
evil  are  also  organized,  and  conveyed  to  organic  hells 
which  correspond  to  them.  Each  judgment,  of 
which  one  exists  at  the  end  of  every  church,  is  thus 
a  reorganization  of  the  spiritual  world ;  and  a  forma- 
tion of  new^  heavens  above  man,  and  of  new  hells 
beneath  man ;  and  after  each  judgment  a  new  organic 
freewill  is  imparted  to  the  men  and  women  of  the 
now  succeedinof  church. 

When  the  Lord  was  born  upon  earth,  the  state  of 
things  mentioned  above,  had  arisen,  and  mankind 
was  no  longer  free,  was  no  longer  at  its  own  disposal. 
To  use  an  expressive  American  phrase,  human  nature 
was  ^'played  out."  The  primordial  aflFections  of  man, 
the  true  protomorph,  the  celestial  church,  had 
perished  from  the  earth  into  lusts,  and  the  divine 
love  was  no  longer  received  directly.  The  first  con- 
science, the  rainbow  of  heaven,  the  human  organ  of 
the  divine  wisdom,  the  spiritual  church,  had  perished 
into  monstrous  creeds,  priesthoods  and  mythologies; 
its  correspondences  were  perverted  into  magic;  and 
Asia,  Egypt,  and  Greece  were  strewed  with  their 
remains,  with  lifeless  creeds  instead  of  spiritual  lives 
of  men.  The  third  church,  the  theocracy  of  forms, 
the  representative  of  a  true  church,  not  the  reality, 
in  which  formal  obedience  was  the  divine  demand, 
had  also  perished  by  perpetual  violations;  reward 
and  punishment  from  above  no  longer  kept  it ;  and 


i 

i 


«• 


228 


THE   WORD  MADE  FLESH. 


THE  WORD  MADE  FLESH 


229 


the  Israelitish  race,  as  a  centre,  was  moved  from  its 
place.  The  natural  man,  as  previously  the  spiritual 
man  and  the  celestial  man,  was  in  full  decay.  Now 
the  earth  subsists  because  tliere  is  orderly  communi- 
cation witli  the  Lord  somewhere  upon  it ;  in  other 
words,  because  there  is  a  true  church  somewhere. 
And  the  heavens  in  the  spiritual  world  subsist 
organically  on  that  church  as  a  basis,  and  by  it  are 
fed  with  continual  individuals.  And  therefore,  if  the 
human  race  is  dying  out,  the  divine  end  is  perishing. 
This  was  threatened  at  the  end  of  every  dispensa- 
tion, and  w^as  averted  by  the  Lord  by  a  new  creation 
of  man  in  man;  by  a  New  Church. 


LX. 


THE   WORD    MADE    FLESIT. 


The  end  now,  Swedenborg  tells  us,  was  foreseen 
by  the  ancient  men  from  the  beginning,  that  when 
human  nature  was  in  plenary  corruption  and  decay, 
and  in  the  true  sense  there  was  ''no  man"  left,  the 
Lord,  the  divine  man  above  the  heavens,  in  whose 
human  imaore  and  likeness  man  was  made,  would 
become  a  divine  man  upon  the  earth  also  by  taking 
upon  Himself  our  human  nature.  This  He  did 
divinely  and  organically  through  the  Virgin  Mary, 
by  the  gate  of  birth.  There  was  no  other  way  by 
which  the  Divine  Natural  could  be  assumed;  no 
apparitional  God  or  man  could  do  it ;  nothing  but 
incarnation.  There  was  no  other  God  to  assume  it 
but  the  one  personal  Jehovah.  There  was  no 
mythological  Trinity,  but  the  I  am  of  eternity.  It 
has  already  been  stated  in  these  pages  that  the  Lord 


thus  took  upon  Himself  a  corrupt  human  nature — 
there  was  none  incorrupt — and  in  it,  by  successively 
passing  from  childhood  to  full  manhood,  and  travers- 
ing every  faculty  of  man.  He  was  exposed  by 
victory  after  victory  to  fresh  assaults  of  hell,  until  in 
His  humanity  He  reigned  over  the  entire  dominion  of 
evil,  and  personally  and  alone  trod  the  winepress, 
and  effected  a  divine  judgment,  and  imposed  a 
divine  order  upon  all  His  enemies.  When  this  is 
rightly  seen  the  Gospels  attest  it;  it  is  the  proof  of 
the  Gospels,  and  they  are  its  counterproofs,  and  a 
redeemed  humanity  is  its  issue. 

As  we  are  bound  to  bear  each  other's  burdens,  so 
are  we  bound  to  deal  humbly  with  those  who  deny 
these  things.  Many  deny  the  possibility  of  them. 
There  is  however  nothing  that  would  conclude 
against  the  incarnation,  and  the  Divine  humanity, 
unless  it  can  be  established  that  atheism  is  true,  and 
also  good  and  useful;  for  if  Jehovah  loved  His 
children.  He  would,  as  has  been  shown  successively, 
follow  them  up  to  save  them  from  that  only  hell- 
fire  which  is  made  of  evil  lusts.  If  they  fell  out  of 
love,  out  of  the  celestial  degree.  He  would  go  after 
them  in  mercy,  and  show  them  wisdom  and  intelli- 
gence, and  teach  them  to  curb  lust  by  the  light  of 
conscience  which  is  wisdom.  If  they  fell  out  of 
conscience.  He  would  again  in  mercy  follow,  and 
give  them  external  motives,  rules  and  forms  of 
divine  significance,  and  ask  only  outward  obedience 
where  the  internal  man  was  destroyed.  And  when 
this  also  failed.  He  would  come  Himself  upon  the 
scene;  He  would  become  the  combatant  for  man, 
by  being  born;  His  soul,  the  Lord  Jehovah, 
His  body,  virtually  and  representatively,  sinful 
humanity. 


230 


THE  WOltD  MADE  FLESH, 


Another  impossibility  may  perhaps  occur  to  some 
physiological  minds,  that  the  Lord  the  Creator 
could  not  thus  come  into  human  nature;  that  the 
conditions  of  birth  were  not  present.  Jehovah  is 
however  the  All  Father;  and  a  divine  father  is 
infinitely  potent  compared  to  a  human  father.  As 
the  Creator  of  all  organization,  of  all  forms  of  being, 
merciful  fatherhood  is  His  essential  prerogative  : 
fatherhood  for  purposes  throughout;  which  no 
mortal  man  is.  The  Father  then  is  present,  the 
purpose  is  divinely  adequate,  the  human  nature 
unresisting,  the  conception  sure.  As  Creator,  He 
has  always  been  in  divine  nexus  with  all  His 
creatures;  He  has  opened  substantially  into  every 
life  from  the  beginning,  and  momentaneously  sus- 
tained it;  His  divine,  celestial,  and  spiritual  influx 
has  been  more  real  than  our  faculties  formed  from 
sense  can  conceive ;  all  for  ends,  final  causes :  nothing 
then  can  prevent  the  downward  prolongation  of  the 
same  divine  truth,  the  same  divine  power,  first  to 
the  Virgin,  then  to  the  Holy  Thing  which  was  born 
of  her,  and  of  whose  first  humanity  she  was  the 
mother.  It  is  a  divine  addition  to  conception, 
because  a  new  purpose  which  thus  only  could  be 
fulfilled,  demanded  its  accomplishment. 

There  are  those  who  think  that  if  ordinary  pre- 
cedents of  birth  be  the  rule,  an  exceptional  precedent 
must  be  disallowed;  as  though  the  common  and  the 
exceptional  would  cancel  each  other  were  both 
admitted.  No  fear  can  be  less  grounded.  The 
latter  substantiates  the  former  both  in  reason  and  in 
fact.  The  very  reason  of  it  was  that  the  human 
race  was  so  perishing,  that  natural  birth,  through  the 
vices  of  parents,  the  accumulated  decay  of  genera- 
tions, and  the  downward  pressure  of  the  anarchies 


THE  WORD  MADE  FLESH 


231 


extant  in  the  spiritual  world,  would  have  surceased, 
unless  a  divine  child,  who  by  successive  outbirths 
of  His  own  virtue  grew  up  to  man,  and  commanded 
the  whole  situation  of  both  worlds,  had  come  upon 
the  scene;  had,  in  other  words,  been  born.  The 
fact  has  followed  :  human  generation  and  genera- 
tions have  been  perpetuated  by  the  advent  of  the 
Redeemer.  Since,  and  under.  Him,  orderly  love  has 
been  re-born.  He  has  illustrated  the  ends  of  the 
first  creation  by  accomplisliing  them  in  His  person 
in  a  second  creation.  Birth  by  natural  parentage 
when  a  natural  man  is  to  be  born ;  birth  by  divine 
parentage  when  the  divine  natural  man  is  to  be 
born.  The  cases  are  different  because  the  issue  is 
different;  but  both  are  under  one  law,  of  salvation, 
and  they  complete  each  other. 

The  truth  is  we  think  darkly,  because  sensually. 
We  regard  this  world  as  substance;  the  spiritual 
world  as  hypothesis;  and  God  as  a  theory.  The 
harder  and  more  unyielding  anything  is,  the  more 
like  stone  or  metal  or  matter,  the  more  real  and 
lasting  the  mind  just  above  the  senses  supposes  it 
to  be.  The  reverse  is  true :  matter  is  less  real  than 
force;  force  than  will;  the  mind  than  the  spirit; 
and  spirit  with  its  world,  and  all  below  it,  is  but 
the  Word  of  the  true  substance,  that  is  to  say  of 
God.  Moreover,  as  reality  ascends,  so  also  does 
organization.  The  higher  planes,  the  mental,  the 
spiritual,  are  transcendently  more  organic  and  expres- 
sive than  the  physical  and  material.  And  so  when 
it  is  said  by  Swedenborg  that  the  Lord  Jehovah 
descended  for  incarnation  as  the  divine  truth,  be  it 
on  true  principles  admitted  by  the  open  mind, 
though  it  cannot  be  realized,  that  that  divine  truth, 
that  imparted  seed,  is  more  in  substance,  form,  love, 


232 


THE  WORD  MADE  FLESH, 


than  worlds  can  portray;  an  infinite  manhood,  whose 
voice,  the  Word,  creates  worlds.  Space  and  size  are 
not  His  measures,  but  love.  Carry  this  to  the  con- 
ception of  the  Lord,  and  let  the  stream  of  living 
substance  descend  from  no  narrower  thouofht.  All 
science  attests  these  positions  when  received  by  the 
mind;  they  meet  science,  and  outwardly  regarded 
can  be  science ;  except  that  they  are  also  more, 
being  divine  truth  full  of  the  work  of  divine  love. 

By  very  creation,  we  are  kept  in  ignorance  of  our 
own  next  ororanic  stao^e,  and  think  of  it  as  nothinof. 
The  little  children  of  this  world  walk  about  amonor 
the  men  and  women  quite  ignorant  of  their  loves,  of 
their  motives  and  thoughts,  and  in  fact  almost  of 
their  lives.  They  only  know  them  as  fathers  and 
mothers  in  the  light  of  food,  and  love,  and  care;  by 
no  means  as  begetting  substances.  If  they  reason 
as  to  where  they  came  from,  they  think  they  are 
found  somewhere;  never  that  they  grow  organically 
from  substantial  seed.  Substance  and  its  questions 
never  occur  with  regard  to  any  plane  above  you 
which  your  affections  do  not  care  for.  This  runs 
upwards  into  spiritual  things,  and  is  the  measure  of 
the  quantity  of  materialism.  It  is  not  however 
blameless  in  men  and  women  as  it  is  in  children; 
the  latter,  for  good  reasons,  are  precluded  from 
adult  knowledge;  and  the  limit  is  their  nursery; 
the  men  and  women  have  their  higher  mind  and 
future  state  revealed  to  them  if  they  will  accept  it ; 
revealed  because  their  natural  minds  cannot  find  it 
out  of  themselves;  and  if  they  deny  it  they  are 
wicked  children  who  stunt  and  twist  their  spiritual 
lives  and  forms;  as  it  were,  voluntary  embryons 
racking  the  dark  womb  of  matter.  Their  own 
science  ought  to  teach  them  that  this  fact  of  non- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ULTIMA TES. 


233 


knowledge  of  what  is  next  above  them  is  a  part  of 
nature;  which  they  have  to  compensate  by  a  watch- 
ful opening  of  the  mind  to  every  direction  from 
which  information  from  above  may  come.  In  fine, 
the  indispensable  prerequisite  of  all  science  other 
than  aggressive  materialism  is  to  become  as  a  little 
child,  praying,  waiting  and  working  for  the  help  of 
the  Good  Father.  Vice  versa,  the  one  condition  of 
materialism  is  intelligentia  ex  se,  to  know  the  limits 
of  all  things  from  self;  and  where  facts  from  above 
are  obstinate,  to  make  the  will  of  the  man  by  syste- 
matic denials  the  measure  of  the  planes  of  creation. 
By  this  means,  urgently  pursued,  the  lowest  stratum 
of  things  becomes  the  mind's  abiding  place;  and  the 
world  is  exactly  of  the  size  and  hardness  of  the  self- 
hood. 


LXI. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    ULTIMATES. 


A  few  words  here  may  be  said  conveniently  on 
another  organic  subject,  namely,  Swedenborg's  doc- 
trine of  Ultimates.  His  terms  are  few,  and  easily 
mastered  by  the  careful  reader,  but  they  require 
strict  attention.  Now  all  completed  creations  proceed 
from  their  first  principles  or  protomorphs  in  char- 
acteristic organic  order  to  their  full  development, 
which  in  the  language  of  Swedenborg  is  their  ulti- 
mate. In  this  way  the  human  body  in  this  world  is 
the  ultimate  of  the  man  who  dwells  within  it. 
Therein  he  comes  into  his  last  realization.  So  body 
is  always  the  ultimate  of  spirit.  The  whole  natural 
world  is  the  ultimate  of  the  spiritual  world.     The 


234 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ULTIMATES, 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ULTIMATES. 


235 


letter  of  the  Word  is  the  ultimate  of  the  spiritual 
sense  which  is  the  Word  in  heaven.     Jesus  Christ, 
become    by   His   own   victories   the    Lord,  is    the 
ultimate     of    Jehovah.       Further,     the    ultimate 
degree,  the    thing   in    act    and    in   fact,    is   in   all 
its    power;    or  ''all   power    exists    in    ultimates." 
Take  the  body  away,  and  the  man  has  no  longer 
power  of  pressure  in  the   natural  world;    he  can 
only  have  it  then  in  the  spiritual  world,  in  which 
again   he   is   embodied   and  ultimated.      Take  the 
natural  world  away,  and  the  spiritual  world  would 
have  no  power,  because  no  basis;   and  its  everlast- 
ing end,  of  replenishment  by  fresh  men  and  women 
for  ever,  would   also  perish.      Take   the   letter  of 
Scripture  away,  and  the  spiritual  sense  would  have 
no  basis  or  resting  place  in  human  minds,  and  the 
divine  purpose  of  the   Word   would  perish.      For 
"  the  ultimate  degree  is  the  complex,  continent,  and 
basis  of  all  that  precedes  it."      It  is  the  complex, 
because  it  involves  all  in  a  common   realization.     It 
is  the  continent,  because  it  contains  all  and  holds  it 
too-ether.      It  is  the  basis,  because  it  founds  and 
establishes  the  end,  and  fixes  reality.     The  earth  is 
such  an  ultimate  or  basis,  intended  by  the  Lord  to 
support  the  kingdoms  of  nature.     The  whole  crea- 
tion is  represented  in  it;  and  it  blossoms  and  lives 
upwards   again    because  of  its  complex   substance 
and  effort  of  ends.       It  is  the  containing  mother 
of  the  creatures. 

When  Jehovah  could  no  longer  address  Himself 
to  an  ultimate  church  upon  the  earth,  the  Divine 
Government  in  men  had  no  foundation,  and  the 
Divine  Word  no  response ;  and  but  for  the  incarna- 
tion, the  world,  being  useless,  would  have  perished. 
In  the  incarnation,  Jehovah  put  on  the  ultimate 
deo'ree;    and  thus  gradually  assumed  all  power  in 


heaven  and  on  earth.  Conquering  the  human  sensual. 
He  put  on  the  divine  sensual;  he  can  now  be  seen; 
He  is  the  Lord  of  the  senses.  In  conquering  the 
human  rational.  He  clothed  Himself  with  the 
divine  rational;  He  is  the  king  of  reason:  come 
let  us  reason  together  saith  the  Lord.  He  triumphed 
over  the  carnal  by  excarnation:  by  a  true  transubstan- 
tiation  into  divine  flesh,  which  is  the  infinite  love  of 
good:  therein  He  rose  from  the  grave.  This  process 
of  incarnation  and  victorious  excarnation  was  effected 
in  order  that  He  might  be  the  Lord  in  ultimates, 
as  He  had  been  from  the  berinninof  Jehovah  or  Lord 
in  first  principles.  And  being  Lord  in  ultimates, 
He  has  taken  to  Himself  all  power  here,  and  is  the 
Divine  complex,  continent  and  basis  of  the  natural 
worlds.  Freewill  no  longer  outlies  Him,  but  still 
subsisting  intact  in  consequence  of  His  redemption, 
is  strictly  individual,  but  subject  in  its  universal 
issues  to  the  mastery  of  His  kingdom.  Since  He 
assumed  the  divine  natural.  He  is  on  earth,  as  in 
His  divine  spiritual  and  celestial  ultimations  He  is 
in  heaven;  and  all  that  is  good  and  wise  in  man- 
kind can  see  Him  when  the  eyes  are  right.  Wo 
cannot  indeed  see  Him  any  longer  in  His  infirm 
humanity  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  because  He  is  no 
longer  a  singly  placed  natural  man,  but  a  divine 
natural  man  presentable  all  over  the  planet  at  all 
times  to  all  men;  the  visible  object  of  prayer; 
the  opener  of  heavenly  joys  in  mortal  hearts  when 
they  shun  infernal  pleasures  ;  the  speaking  Lord 
in  conscience ;  He  knocks  at  the  door  of  all 
wills,  and  beseeches  to  be  let  into  their  primest 
motives ;  in  short.  He  is  omnipresent ;  and  the 
only  limit  of  His  power  is  of  His  ordaining ;  it  is 
His  divine  respect  of  freedom  which  is  mankind. 


I 


f  I 


t 


236        SWEDENBORG  A  RATIONAL  TEACHER 

This  power  of  the  Lord  in  ultimates  is  an  organic, 
and  to  come  lower  down  for  a  present  purpose,  a 
scientific  necessity  of  the  case.  When  a  great  man 
comes  upon  the  scene,  a  great  statesman  or  an 
imperial  mind,  he  has  a  certain  power  in  ultimates 
so  long  as  he  is  alive ;  and  if  he  is  a  great  lover,  or 
a  great  founder,  he  leaves  an  allegiance,  or  an  edifice, 
behind  him,  in  which  he  still  rules  providentially, 
thouirh  when  he  dies,  no  lono^er  with  an  ultimate 
rule.  His  heavenly  mission  is  quite  different  from 
his  earthly  one;  and  thither,  to  heaven,  all  his 
person  has  gone,  and  he  knows  no  more  of  earthly 
things.  The  Divine  man  founded  His  own  regime. 
But  when  He  died  on  the  cross.  He  rose  again  to  the 
disciples  in  the  natural  world.  And  now,  to  His 
disciples.  His  continued  personality  is  extant  in  their 
natural  world.  The  pressure  of  His  omnipresent 
empire  on  every  faculty  is  extant.  He  is  here,  and 
exactly  as  omnipotent  as  mankind  will  allow  Him  to 
be.  He  can  be  omnipotent,  because  He  has  been 
incarnate,  and  is  now  God  in  ultimates.  Any  indi- 
vidual may  exclude  and  ignore  Him  from  the  will 
and  the  mind  :  nations  and  continents  may  do  the 
same;  but  in  His  divine  natural  power  He  reserves 
judgments;  and  these  become  swifter  and  swifter  as 
His  teeming  years  run  on. 


FROM  THE   WORD, 


237 


LXII. 

SWEDENBORG    A    RATIONAL    TEACHER    FROM    THE    WORD. 

He  sent  Swedenborg  to  teach  mankind  out  of  the 
bosom  of  the  Word  these  and  many  other  things. 
He  sent  him  to  teach  the  truth  pertaining  to  Him- 


self, and  to  the  celestial,  spiritual,  and  natural  uni- 
verses. But  until  Swedenborg  was  given,  the  human 
reason  had  no  relation  to  these  stupendous  subjects. 
Christian  theology,  like  astronomy  once,  was  mytho- 
logical and  imaginary:  it  was  for  the  most  part 
beyond  the  intellectual  mind,  and  its  vacancies  were 
supplied  by  the  arbitrary  votes  of  declining  churches. 
As  in  the  days  before  Copernicus  the  starry  heavens 
outlaid  the  knowledge  that  could  become  science,  so, 
before  Swedenborg,  the  divine  truth  of  the  incarna- 
tion of  Jehovah,  the  one  God,  in  Christ,  did  not  enter 
the  domain,  or  the  possibilities,  of  intelligence.  But 
thoughts  beyond  the  reaches  of  our  souls  to-day  are 
a  new  soul  in  our  souls  to-morrow;  when  the  Lord 
the  Revealer  pleases.  Indeed,  as  before  hinted, 
there  is  nothing  new  in  these  successive  entries  of 
subjects  into  sense,  knowledge,  science,  intelligence, 
wisdom,  and  love.  The  process  is  one  phase  of  the 
history  of  the  human  race.  Two  necessities  stand 
over  it.  One,  that  mankind  shall  diligently  care  for 
the  thing  or  the  realm  to  be  investigated,  and  be 
willing  to  put  aside  the  preconceptions  and  conceits 
that  have  held  the  knowing  faculty  in  their  pro- 
visional bondage  previously.  Next,  that  the  Lord's 
time  shall  have  come  for  opening  the  matter.  That 
time  has  now  come  for  the  divine  organic  truths  of 
the  incarnation  to  become  actual  knowledges  to  men 
and  women;  and  if  knowledges,  sciences;  and  if 
sciences,  truths;  and  if  truths,  guides  and  leaders  of 
life,  or  means  to  good.  The  subject  has  become 
rational  and  super-rational;  a  creator  and  redeemer 
of  reasons.  It  fills  love,  it  regenerates  intellect;  and 
its  firm  tread  is  heard  as  it  marches  upon  science,  to 
create  the  scientific  faculty  which  is  to  apprehend  it. 
Swedenborg  is  the  spiritual  Copernicus  who,  coming 


238       SWEDENBORG  A  RATIONAL  TEACHER 

upon  the  cycles  and  epicycles  of  old  theology,  has 
shown  the  unity  and  centrality  of  the  incarnate 
Lord;  the  simple  divinity  of  the  process  by  which 
He  came  to  us ;  the  perfect  analogy  of  His  life  as 
aofainst  evil  with  our  lives  as  ao^ainst  evil :  in  other 
%vords,  of  His  glorification  with  our  regeneration  : 
thus  of  the  solar  majesty  of  His  working  righteous- 
ness with  our  well-doing:  and  also  the  correla- 
tion of  all  forces  that  are  good  and  true,  whether 
physical  or  mental  or  spiritual,  with  His  Love  and 
His  wisdom.  Swedenborg  is  also  the  spiritual 
Newton,  to  whom  it  has  been  given  to  expound  the 
true  constitution  of  the  spiritual  world,  and  to  show 
that  attraction,  which  spiritually  is  love,  reigns  there 
also,  and  that  men  cohere  into  societies,  and  separate 
into  extenses,  and  revolve  round  their  own  central 
objects  of  life,  according  to  what  they  love,  and  tend 
to,  and  feel  delight  in  pursuing.  So  that  heaven 
and  hell  are  constituted  as  it  were  by  its  mighty  law, 
and  clothed  upon  with  corresponding  many  mansions 
all  built  out  in  order  from  the  one  correlator,  the 
Lord.  He  dwells  in  the  spiritual  sun,  whose  planes 
or  planets  are  the  celestial,  spiritual,  and  natural 
lieavens.  Those  who  hate  and  deny  Him  in  heart 
and  life,  by  His  mercy  have  their  abode  in  corre- 
sponding hells,  where  the  sun  of  self  is  thick  dark- 
ness and  darkness  that  give  infernal  light. 

These  positions  are  like  nature,  excepting  only  that 
they  are  above  nature.  They  cohere  with  the  pro- 
cedure of  the  natural  world.  They  suggest  a  pur- 
pose and  a  soul  to  the  forms  of  nature.  They 
carry  space  and  time  higher  to  where  they  become 
subordinates,  and  flexible  as  mind.  You  can  will 
and  think  them  into  being,  and  they  are.  They 
carry  up  the  kingdoms  of  nature,  and  subordinating 


FROM  THE  WORD. 


239 


them  also,  they  receive   souls,  and  good  and  evil 
name  them  for  qualities,  as  Adam,  the  most  ancient 
church,  named  the  beasts  and  birds.      Especially  do 
they  carry  up  human  history  and  the  mind  of  man. 
For  in  the  inner  deeps  of  all  of  us  there  is  a  great 
wave  of  self-evident  truths  ever  coming  on,  and  to 
those  who  will  listen  to  its  silent  roaring,  the  now 
revealed  truths    of  the  Lord,  the  Word  and  the 
spiritual  world,  are  attested  by  special  voices  from 
that  sea,  which,  arising  at   once  from   within  and 
from  without,  seem  so  true,  that  they  are  none  other 
than  the  structure  of  the  mind  itself,  perceivinp-  its 
own-created  harmonies.      Hence  it  is  that  the  in- 
structed  consciousness   of  man   can   perceive   that 
Swedenborg  s  revelations  are  indeed  its  own  conse- 
quences, its  own  necessities,  its  own  desires,  and 
whether  it  be  good  or  evil,  its  own  delights;  in  one 
word,  its  own  abiding  and  spiritual  world.     As  for 
human  history,  Swedenborg,  from  the  Lord,  not  ex'se, 
is  the  historian  of  the  spiritual  world,  and  his  accounts 
cohere  with  the  records  of  our  race  upon  the  earth; 
they  cohere  physiologically,  socially,  metaphysically, 
according  to  all  needful  principles  of  law  and  public 
order  and  morals,  according  to  all  governments,  poli- 
tical and   ecclesiastical,   according   to   all   priceless 
value  of  liberty,  with  the  principles  which  make,  or 
which  mar,  the  world.     But  in  his  writings  these 
domains  are  the  subjects  of  divine  justice  and  mercy, 
and  the  concurrent  philosophy  of  his  history  is  the 
exact  action  and  pressure  of  the  Lord's  name,  of  His 
qualities,  upon  events.    Therefore  the  human  history, 
which  looked  at  from  without  is  chaotic,  for  the  most 
part  the  crime  sheet  of  mankind,  revealed  and  illu- 
minated  from  within,  is  organic;  it  is  the  history 
of  the  Divine  Man,  the  Divine  Statesman,  dealing 


240 


CORRELATIONS  OF  THEOLOGY. 


since  the  beginning  with  His  kingdom  of  heaven  and 
with  His  empire  universally.  This  has  been  illus- 
trated before  in  these  pages  in  the  record  of  the 
churches. 


LXIIL 


CORRELATIONS    OF    THEOLOGY. 

All  exact  knowledge  coheres  with  other  know- 
ledc>'e.  Incoherence  demonstrates  that  the  equation 
is  wrongly  stated  in  some  of  its  terms  on  one  side  or 
the  other.  For  instance,  the  position  that  the  sun 
revolves  round  the  earth  coheres  with  nothing  but 
the  fallacious  sight:  there  is  not  a  single  analogue 
of  the  truth  of  the  case  in  the  normal  universe.  The 
Selfhood,  making  all  things  unimportant  in  com- 
parison to  itself,  is  its  only  similar.  It  flouts  all 
true  ideas  of  relative  importance.  It  is  against  all 
preponderance,  and  all  government.  It  is  the  fly 
on  the  wheel  causing  the  progress  of  the  car.  ^  It 
falsifies  the  sun  and  the  stars  and  the  firmament  into 
smallness  in  order  that  they  may  exist  in  its  conceit. 
But  the  true  order  of  the  solar  system  once  gained, 
its  theory  presently  becomes  equated  with  all  nature; 
an  apple  falling  to  the  ground  may  suggest  the  cords 
that  spread  the  tent  of  creation;  the  cohesion  of 
every  stone  on  the  ground  is  a  carrying-out  of  the 
same  view;  chemical  affinity  is  nothing  but  the 
flowering  of  the  doctrine  into  mineral  marriages 
innumerable;  the  rotundity  of  the  earth;  the  safe 
pressure  of  antipodes  towards  antipodes;  are  part 
and  parcel  of  one  large  truth  vibrating  through  as 
many  harmonies  as  there  are  diverse  things.  Now 
it  is  impossible  that  the  true   theology,  the   true 


CORRELA TIONS  OF  THE OLOGY.  241 

natural  religion,  of  which  the  Word  made  flesh,  the 
incarnation,  is  the  crown,  should  not,  being  divine 
truth,  assert  itself  in  theory  in  every  one  of  the 
subordinate  sciences;  that  it  should  not  with  a 
divine  hand  modify  them  all,  and  make  them  plastic 
to  its  purposes;  that  it  should  not  correct  their 
fallacies,  and  rebuke  their  fantasies,  falsities  and 
superstitions,  just  as  the  modern  astronomy  with 
the  sun  for  its  centre  has  destroyed  the  Ptolemaic 
astronomy,  and  corrects  with  just  thought  the  eyes 
of  all  the  world  that  think  they  really  see  the  sun 
go  round  the  earth. 

Herein,  through  correspondences,  we  discern  the 
existence  and  function  of  great  and  new  touchstones 
of  truth.     The  two  worlds,  of  nature  and  spirit,  being 
inevitably  correlated,  whatever  views   are  isolated 
from  the  correlation  are  not  truths  pertaining   to 
things.     For  example,   the  leading  dogmas  of  the 
first  Christian  church  have  no  correspondence  with 
knowledge,  or   organic  faculty:    they   equate  with 
nothing  in  the  Lord  s  creation.     Tlie  three  persons 
in   the  Godhead  are  perturbation  to  the  unity  of 
nature.    Science  must  either  be  arrayed  against  this, 
or  pass  it  by  with  careful  neglect.     It  is  mystical, 
not  rational;    and  the  mind  requires   an  artificial 
organism  in  it  created  by  itself  to  receive  it  into  rest. 
The  descent  of  the  second  person  into  incarnation  to 
save  the  humaa  race  from  the  vengeance  of  the  first 
by  a  death  on  the  cross,  satisfying  justice  vicariously, 
is  like  nothing  in  human  justice,  stands  alone  in  the 
faculties  of  mankind,  is  attested  by  nothing  but  the 
votes  of  churches,  is  no  hypothesis,  still  less  theory 
of  the  letter  of  Scripture,  and  it  is  impossible  to  show 
how  any  but  a  vicious  redemption  could  be  wrought 
by  it.     As  for  any  attestation  from  the  history  of 

Q 


242 


CORRELATIONS  OF  THEOLOGY, 


our  race,  such  substitutions  of  the  innocent  for  the 
guilty,  give  the  guilty  immunity  and  make  them 
worse ;  and  the  tribunals  which  allow  the  fact 
are  accursed.  If  the  good  redeem  the  rest  of  man- 
kind, it  is  by  reigning  over  them,  and  teaching  tliem 
subordination  and  then  self-help,  not  by  paying  their 
debts.  It  is  superfluous  to  say  that  there  is  nothing 
in  created  nature  that  does  not  pass  by  the  atonement 
without  being  able  to  say  one  word  to  it.  Here 
then  is  a  second  mystery  out  of  all  correspondence 
with  known  thinofs,  human  and  divine.  So  also  the 
faculty  of  apprehending  these  dogmas,  compulsory 
faith  shaped  by  authority,  is  a  false  faculty  which 
can  lay  hold  of  nothing  else.  It  cannot  eat  one 
crumb  of  the  bread  of  knowledge.  A  single  natural 
truth  placed  in  it  would  explode  it;  for  reason  would 
begin  to  be  evolved,  questioning  would  ensue,  and 
the  very  purpose  of  the  faculty,  to  receive  blindly  on 
trust  and  the  information  of  second  parties,  would 
be  vacated.  The  reason  is  obvious:  it  is  not  a 
created  faculty,  like  the  reason,  the  will,  the  affec- 
tions, or  the  senses ;  but  an  artificial  morbid  state, 
representing  the  decay  of  the  perceptions  and 
charities  of  churches  since  the  beginning.  It  com- 
poses men  by  voting  that  they  see  when  they 
see  not,  and  hear  when  they  hear  not.  But  it 
is  alien  to  all  the  manly  and  virtuous  operations  of 
the  mind.  Nature  worked  by  such  a  faculty  would 
speedily  fly  away  in  phantasms.  Imagine  any 
science  with  a  pontiff  in  the  middle  of  it,  and  com- 
pulsory faith  working  it  through  decrees.  Imagine 
the  universal  modern  Galileo  worked  by  the  Pope. 
All  facts  would  be  gone  in  a  moment;  all  knowledge 
recanted;  all  degradation  of  experiment  achieved; 
and  natural  blindness  with  instruction  to  use  the 


CORRELA TIONS  OF  THEOLOG  K  243 

fancy  be  recognized  as  novum  organum.  Faith  in 
mysteries,  therefore,  corresponds  to  nothing,  and  has 
no  countercheck,  and  no  world. 

The   weight   of    the    faith    also    corresponds   to 
nothing  divine.     It  is  alleged  that  the  man  who  im- 
plicitly believes  these  mystical  dogmas  is  saved  by 
his  faith  without  the  works  of  the  law.     In  a  wicked 
world  it  is  to  a  great  extent  impossible  to  do  right, 
to  carry  religion  right  down,  and  by  it  regenerate 
all   life;    and   therefore   faith   in    Christ's  work  is 
vicarious  for  human  virtue,  and  faith  alone  saves. 
Here    again     there     is     no     correlation,     no     cor- 
respondence   with    anything    human,    natural,    or 
divine.      It   is   an   attempt   to    escape   out  of  the 
window  into  the  sky,  when  gravitation  presses,  and 
the  earth  is   the    only  footing.     In   human   work, 
ceasing   to   do  evil,   and   learning   to  do  well,  are 
the  modes  of  true  life,  and  apply  througliout.    Faith 
in  something  else  than  this  ceasing  and  this  learn- 
ing is  irrelevant.     There  is  no  conscience  in  it ;  or 
only  a  compulsory  conscience  proceeding  from  the 
same  authority  as  the  faith.     There  is  no  nature  in 
it;    for   all    her    processes    are    downright   careful 
exact  work  carrying  principles  and  ends,  and  faith- 
ful to  performance  as  their  reason  of  being.     There 
IS  nothing  divine  in  it  unless  you  first  create  your 
divinity,  and  then  put  this  into  his  exactions.     It  is 
against  all  the  Lord's  doing ;   for  His  whole  life  was 
a  battle  of  deeds,  and  He  became  divine  justice 
and   judgment,   not    by    alone    believing    on    the 
Father,  Jehovah,   but   by  practically,   through  re- 
sistance to  evil  after  evil,  and  falsity  after  falsity, 
and   temptation   on   temptation,   conquering   earth, 
hell,  and  heaven,  and  reducing  them  to  divine  order. 
One  thing  more  is  not  in  it,  hope  for  mankind.     It 


244 


CORRELA TIONS  OF  THE OLOGY. 


is  the  very  despair  of  that  regeneration  of  the  present 
world  which  the  Divine  Truth  descended  to  effect  in 
the  Lord ;  and  a  test  of  this  is  that  our  clergy  who 
believe  most  in  justification  by  faith  alone  are  of 
all  men  the  greatest  despairers  for  the  earth.  The 
atheists  and  materialists  believe  more  in  some  kind 
of  natural  regeneration,  and  so  far  in  a  mirage  of 
the  New  Jerusalem,  than  do  the  ecclesiastics  of  the 
first  Christian  churches. 

The  hopes  of  the  future  life  are  as  baseless  as  is 
the  faith  of  despair  for  this  life  which  inspires  them. 
What  cannot  save  in  the  world  cannot  save  in  the 
heavens.  For  example,  the  blind  faith  that  im- 
perfect men  and  women  from  the  world  by  laying 
hold  of  Christ  can  in  dying  be  at  once  translated 
into  "  glory,"  corresponds  to  nothing  wise  or  good ; 
and  common  sense  rejects  it.  Such  a  change  in 
faculties  would  violate  and  destroy  all  faculty,  and 
personal  identity,  including  freedom,  would  melt 
away  on  the  instant.  There  is  no  process  in  it,  as 
there  is  in  everything  divine ;  consequently,  no 
truth,  or  reference  of  the  past  to  the  present  and 
the  future.  It  correlates  with  juggling,  not  with 
salvation.  In  the  spiritual  world,  men  are  led  on  by 
stages,  swift,  or  slow,  according  to  their  states, 
towards  final  conditions  of  good,  or  evil ;  they  are 
led  by  divine  management  to  put  off  their  apparent 
selves,  and  to  come  into  their  most  real  selves ;  and 
for  every  state  a  corresponding  place  is  prepared ; 
they  are  led  by  processes  which  strictly  equate  with 
their  first  education  in  this  natural  world,  where 
the  appearances  of  good  are  indispensable  to  com- 
mand success  in  life ;  only  that  in  the  upper  world 
this  world's  ideal  is  realized,  and  it  is  the  realities  of 
good  which  gain  the  prize.     Thus  it  is  all  work  in 


CORRELATIONS  OF  THEOLOGY. 


245 


both  worlds,  the  shunning  of  evil,  and  the  doino-  of 
good.  The  end  in  heaven  is  more  transcendent  than 
we  conceive ;  the  glory  of  the  Lord,  not  personal 
glory,  shines  round  about  those  who  attain  thither; 
but  it  is  necessarily  founded  on  the  character  of  the 
man,  as  the  character  is  founded  upon  the  practical 
life  ;  so  that  the  stupendous  gift  can  be  received 
without  destroying  the  will.  Heaven  is  a  divine 
Charity  Organization  Society,  with  an  infinite 
Capitalist  of  love,  peace,  innocence,  joy,  power, 
w^ork,  delight,  as  its  sustainer.  All  at  first  are 
paupers  there,  except  that  they  will  to  do  His  work. 
He  knows  better  than  we  that  gifts  cannot  be  given 
unless  they  can  be  also  received.  From  the  mercy 
of  His  own  blessedness  He  doles  out  the  largesses 
of  salvation  so  as  not  to  spoil  His  angels;  for  'Hhe 
heavens  are  not  pure  in  His  sight;"  and  '^He 
accuses  His  angels  of  folly;"  all  Avhich  is  but 
another  stage  of  the  doings  of  His  hand  in  nature; 
whereby  He  will  have  men  to  help  themselves  as 
the  one  chief  help  which  He  can  give  them.  In 
this  experience,  dwelt  on  at  large  by  Swedenborg, 
the  spiritual  and  natural  worlds  are  correspondent, 
and  the  education  of  mankind  here  serves  exactly  for 
the  place  it  is  to  fulfil  in  the  human  life  to  come. 

Besides  the  "  immediate  glory  "  party,  the  church 
has  in  it  another,  which  may  be  called  the  party  of 
the  immediate  grave;  implying  virtually  the  sleep 
of  the  man  till  the  day  of  judgment,  and  the  resur- 
rection then  of  the  dust  into  the  man.  This,  it  is 
obvious,  corresponds  also  to  nothing.  There  is  no 
knowledge  in  the  grave,  and  nothing  but  morbid 
dogmatic  fancy  in  such  an  idea  of  non-existent 
existence.  The  truth  is,  that  the  man  rises  by  pro- 
cess immediately   that  his  fleshly  heart   ceases   to 


246 


CORRELATIONS  OF  THEOLOGY, 


beat ;  he  is  indrawn  by  the  Lord  into  the  other 
world  ;  his  spiritual  senses  are  unclothed  of  mor- 
tality, and  are  opened  to  perceive  the  universe  then 
about  him;  just  as  his  natural  senses  as  a  baby 
were  opened  at  first  to  the  natural  world.  This  is 
experience,  and  here  is  continuity  of  being  with 
only  a  difference  of  degree.  The  man  and  woman 
is  still  a  full  man  with  every  organ  represented ;  for 
this  man  it  was,  and  no  yeast  of  protoplasm,  that 
was  used  as  architect  to  build  up  the  mortal  organs 
here.  The  Lord,  in  His  higher  office,  through  the 
plan  of  the  spirit,  built  out  into  nature  and  matter 
a  subordinate  spirit,  which  should  spell  the  syllables 
of  creation  before  reading  the  same  syllables  as 
words  in  the  Word  in  heaven.  It  has  been  seen 
before,  and  will  again  be  seen,  that  the  judgment 
on  men  is  not  at  the  end  of  the  sleep  of  the  grave 
in  this  world,  but  being  a  judgment  on  the  spirits 
and  purposes  of  men,  commences  by  processes  as 
soon  as  death  takes  place,  and  is  continued  and  com- 
pleted alone  in  the  spiritual  world.  No  judgment 
of  spiritual  beings  is  plausible  or  possible  in  nature, 
where  the  spiritual  is  concealed. 

Allied  by  subject  only,  not  opinion,  to  these  two 
parties,  of  immediate  glory,  and  immediate  grave,  is 
another  class  of  minds,  who  will  have  it  that  in  both 
worlds  there  is  a  steady  necessary  progress  of  man- 
kind towards  divine  ends;  that  the  human  race  is 
always  on  the  advance  upwards  and  onwards.  This 
is  as  contrary  to  experience  as  the  glory  theory: 
history  is  against  it;  for  if  there  were  no  fall  at  the 
first,  as  these  people  insist,  the  record  of  mankind  is 
full  of  nothing  but  mighty  falls  since.  Falls  of  great 
organic  systems  of  minds  ;  whole  faculties  swept 
away,  and  supplanted  by  others;  falls  of  churches 


CORRELATIONS  OF  THEOLOGY. 


247 


and  empires  ;  falls  of  individuals  all  around  us  in 
the  battle  of  life.  Therefore  this  creed,  of  the 
necessary  progress  of  the  species,  is  correlated  with 
no  experience,  and  contradicted  by  all  circumstance. 
When  man  insists  on  self,  and  on  being  left  to  him- 
self, he  falls,  and  having  a  freewill,  has  a  right  to 
fall;  he  falls  individually  and  collectively:  when 
his  collective  fall  is  complete,  the  Lord  intervenes  ; 
reduces  the  fallen  state  to  order  that  it  may  not 
propagate  ruin  further  ;  introduces  a  new  divine 
state,  in  which  those  who  choose  have  a  fresh  point 
of  departure  :  and  thus  Himself  ensures  another 
progression,  but  not  on  the  basis  of  any  "  progress 
of  the  species,"  but  rather  on  its  proclivity  to  retro- 
grade. All  this  is  attested  in  sufficient  measure  in 
the  natural  world  ;  it  corresponds  to  history,  and 
fatherhood,  and  statesmanship;  it  is  transcendently 
like  the  action  of  every  great  and  good  man  who 
has  governance  given  him  here :  he  is  perpetually,  by 
law,  ordinance,  punishment,  repressing  the  disorderly, 
and  raising  the  fallen;  at  present  he  has  hardly  any 
other  mission :  and  the  Divine  Man,  of  whom  all  good 
rulers  are  ima2:es,  does  the  like.  The  writings  of 
Swedenborg  here  again  are  organic,  scientific,  full  of 
common  'sense,  and  in  harmonious  correspondence 
with  all  experience  of  life.  And  they  are  correlated 
to  good,  which  has  to  discern,  admit,  and  combat 
evil;  not  to  put  it  into  pseudophilosophical  series 
and  compromise  with  itself. 

One  other  doctrine  shall  be  mentioned  which  again 
lacks  correspondence,  and  which  therefore  nature 
abhors  :  the  doctrine  that  death  is  the  annihilation 
of  the  man.  This  too  contradicts  experience,  and 
dares  not  face  it.  It  is  superfluous  to  say  that  the 
position  is  correlated  with  nothing,  because  it  is  of 


248 


DEATH  CONFIRMS  BELIEFS, 


nothing,  and  is  nothing.     It  asserts  nothing  as  its 
end.     It  affronts  every  science.     It  counts  the  force 
of  all   love   of  life   striking   the   anvil,    death,    as 
nothing  :  whereas  death  becomes  white  hot  momen- 
taneously  under  the  stroke  of  surceasing  life  with  a 
second  life  from  the  Lord.     More  absurd  than  the 
glory   theory,  more    superstitious   than   the  grave 
theory,    more  false  than  the  necessary  progress  of 
species  theory,  it  is,  if  held  in  heart  and  not  in  mere 
intellectual  impotence,  the  crowning  dogma  of  the 
fool.     That  this  belief  has   enthusiastic   admirers, 
who  lose  no  opportunity  of  enforcing  it  to  simple 
audiences  of  men  and  women,  and  therefore  to  little 
children,  demonstrates  its  spiritual  origin  from  the 
heart   and   the   liking,   and  its  prevalence   in   the 
spiritual  world.     It  is  the  permitted  creed  and  com- 
fort of  hell  to  believe  that  there  are  no  divine  ends 
of  perpetuity;    that   the   inhabitants    make   them- 
selves, and  continue  themselves,  by  their  own  ability. 
Those   who  hold   the   annihilation   theory   in    this 
world,    ought   in   common    decency   of   society   to 
proifer    it    only    to    wilful     murderers,    violators, 
robbers,  and  villains  of  a  deep  dye,  because,  though 
false,  it  is  their  proper  gospel,  and  excuses  them  in 
their  judgment  here,  and  from  their  judgment  to 
come.     Those  also  who  will  to  hold  that  nothinsr 
can  be  known  of  the  life  after  death,   are   of  the 
same  class,  but  in  its  interior  cave. 


LXIV. 

DEATH    CONFIRMS    BELIEFS,    GOOD    AND    EVIL. 

Here  it  occurs  to  remark,  as  a  strange  continua- 
tion of  nature  and  unexpected  correlation,  that  death 


DEATH  CONFIRMS  BELIEFS 


249 


does  not  alter  radical  beliefs  in  the  way  it  might 
superficially  be  thought  to  do.  Swedenborg  has 
much  experience  on  this  point.  The  disbeliever  in 
what  is  truly  spiritual  carries  his  disbelief  with  him 
into  the  spiritual  world,  and  there  heartily  maintains 
it.  He  believes  in  the  body  and  the  world,  which 
is  then  hell,  as  all.  The  wilful  denier  of  God,  the 
heart-atheist,  denies  Him  in  that  world  with  a  more 
potent  aversion,  and  is  spiritually  turned  away  from 
Him  with  a  success  which  is  impossible  on  this 
earth.  He  is  an  atheist  from  his  first  brain  forms 
to  his  last  fingers'  ends.  The  disbeliever  in  the 
resurrection,  after  the  first  astonishment  of  revival 
is  over,  gradually  walks  back  through  mental,  now 
also  bodily,  paths,  to  a  complete  denial  of  a  future 
life,  and  an  equal  oblivion  that  he  is  in  that  life. 
It  is  more  hard  to  quit  these  confirmed  states  in 
the  spiritual  than  in  the  natural  world ;  because  the 
spiritual  world  is  single ;  the  natural  is  one  world 
within  the  other  ;  and  in  the  natural  degree,  truths 
are  taught  by  a  separate  intellect,  which  can  impress 
them  upon  an  unwilling  will ;  whereas,  in  the 
spiritual  world,  the  intellect  proceeds  directly  from 
the  ruling  love  which  commands  the  will,  and 
carries  it  out  with  the  full  boldness  of  the  spirit. 
As  Shakespear  says  of  a  fiery  horse  : 

'^  He  sees  his  love  and  nothing  else  he  sees. 
For  nothing  else  with  his  proud  sight  agrees." 

Absolute  necessity  in  repression,  enforced  by  punish- 
ments, is  the  only  thing  that  curbs,  not  alters,  the 
human  spiritual  animals  in  the  hells. 

This  coincides,  correlates,  exactly  with  the  inward 
experience  of  men  and  women  here.  If  they  are 
not  growing  better,  by  resisting  evils  as  sins  against 


250 


SPIRITUAL  SCIENCE 


the  Lord,  by  regeneration,  they  become  more  and 
more  fixed  in  their  habits  of  wrong,  in  their  mental 
states  [and  perceptions  ;  their  intelligence  gradually 
bears  a  smaller  and  smaller  proportion  to  their  bad 
affections;  rebukes  them  less  and  less;  and  they 
come  into  a  final  mental  state  here  before  they 
are  received  into  the  final  world  corresponding 
organically  and  bodily  to  that  state  hereafter. 
This  is  a  scientific  truth,  undeniable,  supplemented 
only  by  Swedenborg,  who  saw  it  carried  out  to  its 
created  losfic  of  ends  in  the  nether  universe. 


LXV. 


SPIRITUAL    SCIENCE    IMPLIES    SPIRITUAL    REVELATION   OF 

ITS    GOD    AND    ITS   WORLD. 

It  has  now  been  shown  pretty  extensively  that  all 
real  subjects  have  scientifics  belonging  to  them, 
exact  knowledges,  and  that  those  subjects  which 
have  none  such,  are  arbitrary  and  baseless  fancies  ; 
which  held  by  the  will  are  falsities  ;  and  loved  by  an 
inflamed  will  are  insanities. 

It  remains  to  point  out  that  science  must  have 
real  objects  at  both  ends  of  its  field.  It  is  com- 
monly said  that  science  proceeds  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown,  the  object  being  of  course  to  make 
the  unknown  again  into  the  known.  This  is  true 
in  knowledge,  but  must  not  without  a  complete  re- 
servation be  carried  over  into  reality.  Were  it  so, 
nature  and  spirit  would  be  the  bubbles  and  play- 
things of  science,  and  not  its  limits  and  nurses.  To 
put  the  matter  in  another  way,  and  avoid  abstract 
propositions,  the  field  of  inquiry  must  be  given,  or 


IMPLIES  SPIRITUAL  REVELATION,  251 

there  is  no  object  to  investigate.  Then,  from  the 
part  seen  and  understood,  science  proceeds  with  its 
mind  to  the  part  seen  and  not  understood.  But 
both  parts  must  be  equally  seen.  For  example, 
terrestrial  physics  are  naturally  studied  with  success 
before  solar  physics,  and  yet  the  sun,  be  it  ever  so 
little  understood,  is  brighter  and  bigger  than  the 
earth  to  the  very  senses  :  the  sun  is  given ;  the 
inquirer  has  not  to  make  the  sun  as  well  as  to  make 
the  knowledge  of  it.  This  is  an  image  of  other  sub- 
jects. The  object  of  science  must  always  be  given, 
and  be  sensible  and  fact,  or  science  proceeds  from 
the  known  to  the  unknown,  in  the  sense  of  losino- 
itself  in  the  unknown,  and  hurling  its  process  from 
beginning  to  end  into  nonentity. 

Now  nature  is  a  revelation  of  facts  to  the  senses  : 
if  there  were  any  man  who  wilfully  denied  this  re- 
vealed universe,  and  accepted  onlyhisown  mind,  count- 
ing the  frame  of  things  as  shadow  and  the  unknown, 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  his  scientific  life  would  be  a 
phantasy,  and  that  the  more  reality  were  preached 
to  him  by  things,  the  more  he  would  rebel,  and 
call  out  for  some  other  universe  than  the  real  one 
to  push  into  and  to  conquer.  He  would  make  the 
mistake  of  attempting  to  proceed  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown  both  in  knowledofe  and  in  fact.  This 
is  what  theism  and  atheism  do  actually,  so  far  as 
experience,  knowledge,  science,  intelhgence,  and  the 
wisdom  applicable  to  all  these  faculties,  are  con- 
cerned. They  occupy  themselves  with  an  attempt 
to  pass  from  known  fact  to  unknown  fact,  instead  of 
from  known  fact  understood  to  known  fact  not 
understood,  but  subject  to  understanding.  These 
remarks  do  not  apply  to  affectional,  but  to  scientific 
and  intellectual  things.     The  corollary  to  be  drawn 


252 


SPIRITUAL  SCIENCE 


r  w 
II 


is,  that  if  God  is  not  given  in  experience,  science  lias 
no  end  but  the  always  unknown;  which  amounts  to 
saying,  that  science  with  all  its  strides  walks  towards 
incurable  iornorance,  or  to  its  ow^n  annihilation. 
There  are  not  w^anting  scientific  minds  which  accept 
this  conclusion  :  they  make  order  to  hand  it  over  to 
anarchy.  Assuredly  this  does  not  belong  to  honest 
science  ;  but  the  human  faculties  are  associated,  and 
sometimes  interlocked ;  and,  as  before  pointed  out, 
false  philosophy  has  got  into  science,  as  witness  the 
British  Association,  and  is  working  it  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  coming  head  foremost  against  the 
wall  of  the  unknown;  an  old  trick  of  philosophy,  to 
knock  the  brains  out  of  science, 

Swedenborg  has  enabled  us  to  reverse  the  process; 
and  by  the  statement  of  divine  truths  concerning  the 
incarnation  and  the  reasons  of  the  Lord's  life  on 
earth,  he  has  abolished  the  unknown  from  fact,  and 
placed  a  perfectly  known  and  seen  God  in  the  front 
of  His  universe.  This  is  the  only  possible  salvation 
of  science,  as  well  as  of  the  human  race.  That  God, 
the  source  of  all  good  and  of  all  truth,  should  be 
knowable  for  what  He  is  as  nature  and  man  are 
knowable.  And  the  first  question  for  the  natural  man 
inevitably  is,  Who  is  God?  in  other  words.  Has  He 
shown  Himself  personally  in  history?  This,  given  in 
the  Gospels  for  the  wise  and  the  simple,  is  settled  bya 
divinely  illuminated  reason,  the  beginning  of  a  New 
Church,  for  the  intellectual  and  the  scientific  mind, 
by  a  complete  theory,  which  culminates  in  the  truth, 
that  He  who  was  Jesus  Christ  in  His  suffering  com- 
batant humanity,  is  the  Lord  Jehovah  Himself. 
Every  eye  hath  seen  Him,  and  they  also  who 
pierced  Him;  every  heart  knows  Him  either  by  accept- 
ance or  rejection.  There  is  no  claimant  for  the  throne  of 


IMPLIES  SPIRITUAL  REVELATION,         253 

our  allegiance  but  Himself  In  His  divine  humanity 
God  can  be  known  more  perfectly  than  man  can  be 
known  in  his  consciousness,  his  origin,  his  history,  or 
his  hopes.  The  reason  is  that  He  is  good,  which 
man  is  not ;  and  good  is  calculable,  and  consistent, 
and  true  throughout ;  a  firm  basis  of  inquiry  and 
knowledge,  helping  the  knower  and  the  inquirer  to 
be  better  as  he  proceeds;  so  that  at  last  it  will  be 
true  that  ''the  knowledge  of  the  Lord  shall 
cover  the  earth  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea."  The 
sea  is  scientifics  generally;  the  knowledge  of  the 
Lord  is  the  divine  truth,  governing  all  subordinate 
fields,  and  leading  to  regeneration  and  final  salvation. 
The  Word  is  the  firmament  and  w^orld  of  this  truth. 
Consequently,  the  natural  world,  known  and  seen,  is 
the  beginning  of  scientific  thought ;  the  Word, 
known  and  seen,  is  the  end  corresponding  to  the 
beginning.  Its  spiritual  and  celestial  senses  within 
the  letter  are  the  movement  of  the  Lord  through  the 
heavens  into  our  minds,  which  they  will,  if  we 
please,  re-create,  until  even  mundane  science  itself 
will  be  gifted  by  them  to  understand  whatever  is 
spiritually  useful  and  necessary  respecting  the  con- 
ditions of  creation:  beyond  which  no  honest  ordeily 
science  can  desire  to  go.  It  is  obvious  that  if  you  make 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  maker  of  any  machine, 
and  wish  to  learn  of  him,  he  is  the  best  authority  for 
teaching  you  its  purpose,  its  adaptations,  its  history, 
and  its  realized  use.  The  Lord  is  the  Maker  of  the 
cosmos;  and  none  but  He,  by  revelation  from 
Himself,  can  instruct  the  human  faculties,  that 
salvation,  all  of  which  He  wrouorht,  and  reofeneration, 
which  we  have  to  accomplish  for  ourselves  ;  and  thus 
the  making  of  men  and  women  perfect  as  He  is 
perfect,  are  the  ends  or  final  causes  of  the  whole 


254 


CONCEITS  IN  SCIENTISM. 


created  universe.  Meantime,  the  dilemma  of  the 
present  natural  science  is,  either  to  accept  the  Lord 
in  the  Word,  or  else  to  measure  inevitable  con- 
clusions with  the  unknown,  and  to  walk  with  ever 
painful  steps  to  its  own  annihilation.  It  could  all 
be  annihilated  even  in  this  nineteenth  century,  and 
with  it  all  the  arts  too  ;  the  railroads  could  cease  to 
run,  and  the  telegraph  to  give  messages ;  the  daily- 
papers  could  die  out ;  if  only  godless  degradation  of 
society  were  to  triumph,  and  honesty  to  depart 
before  triumphant  selfishness  :  for  all  of  it,  science 
as  well  as  the  arts,  is  kept  up  by  a  constant  influx 
from  the  Lord,  and  does  not  come  of  itself;  but  this 
influx  alone  lifts  man  continually  above  his  lusts  into 
the  possibilities  of  wonderful  invention  and  daily 
honest  workinof  which  distino^uish  this  the  infant  aire 
of  the  New  Jerusalem.  The  **stability  of  civiliza- 
tion "  is  always  at  stake  unless  the  Lord  is  moving 
in  it  and  over  it. 


LXVI. 


CONCEITS   IX  SCIENTISM,    AND   SOCIAL    CHAOS   THEREFROM. 

Hitherto  the  argument  has  proceeded  by  the 
method  of  correlations  or  correspondences,  and  we 
have  found  that  mankind  is  divided  in  itself,  and 
that  at  a  certain  height  the  human  faculties  break 
off*,  and  being  definite,  exact,  knowing,  scientific,  and 
rational  below,  they  become  in  theological  matters 
inept,  and  impotent,  and  have  to  make  themselves 
artificial  organs  of  blind  faith  in  order  to  deceive 
themselves  with  a  show  of  exactitude  in  arbitrary 
creeds  and  articles.     The  faculties  are  however  as 


\\ 


CONCEITS  IN  SCIENTISM. 


255 


much  broken  short  in  scientific  men  as  they  are  in 
churchmen;  the  method  of  correlation  accuses  the 
scientific  also  of  blind  faith  and  lack  of  investigation. 
If  they  are  not  imprisoned  in  thirty-nine  articles,  it 
is  only  that  they  have  not  thought  fit  so  to  declare 
them.     They  are  imprisoned  in  the  dogma  of  action 
that  you  can  successfully  explore  nature  and  take 
no  heed  to  God.     Also  that  you  can  break  life  and 
love  open,  and  have  life  and  love  before  you.      Also 
that  space  and  time  are  infinite,  and  nature  eternal. 
Also  that  you  come  everywhere  to  the  unknown. 
Also    that  one  creature  by  self-evolution  chano-es 
into  another,  whereby  a  great  part  of  the   mental 
space  of  science  is  filled  with  missing  links,  and  the 
mind,  which  never  has  found  and  never  will  find  one 
of  them,  is   fatigued   and   devastated.     Also   that 
atheism  is  established,  and  politic  selfishness  moral. 
Also  that  the  greater  selfhoods  of  corporations  are 
better   than   the    little  ones  of  individuals.     AVith 
many  other  conclusions  utterly  broken  away  from 
all     astronomy,     geology,     physiology,    chemistry, 
mechanics,  and  other  real  sciences.     These  positions 
correspond  to,  and  correlate   with,   nothing;    true 
science  has  never  struck  them,  and   they  have  in 
them  none  of  the  force,  light  or  heat  by  which  exact 
knowledge  below,   received  into  reason,  would  pre- 
sent a  plane   on   which  higher  knowledge  comino- 
from  abov^  could  preparedly  represent  itself 

The  truth  is  that  the  scientific  mind,  and  neces- 
sarily therefore  science  itself,  is  full  of  lusts  and 
falsities,  and  the  positions  recorded  above  are  the 
signs  of  these  terrible  interpolations  of  non-faculties 
into  the  field  of  knowledge.  And  what  happens 
with  ideas,  happens  to  men.  The  agents  and 
abettors  of  the  false  thirty-nine  articles  of  modern 


256 


CONCEITS  IN  SCIENTISM, 


SPIRITISM. 


257 


i 


*t 


*i 


science  have  a  supreme  delight  in  being  out  of  their 
own  proper  places.  They  break  between  their  real 
fitness  and  their  assumed  functions.  Some  eminent 
man  who  is  great  in  natural  experiment  undertakes  to 
illuminate  the  ''  British  Association"  with  regard  to 
the  to  him  probable  material  nature  of  the  Godhead. 
Obviously  his  opinions  on  this  subject  are  not  led 
to  by  his  genius  or  his  vocation.  H  e  had  better 
continue  his  experiments  honestly ;  and  if  he 
wishes  practically  to  benefit  his  kind,  embark  in 
chemical  works  with  new  auspices  of  invention. 
Another  eminent  person  towers  from  the  pulpit  of 
his  protoplasm,  and  pronounces  for  the  ferment  of 
the  slime  of  nature,  and  the  goal  of  the  unknown, 
leaving  aside  the  Almighty  as  of  no  consequence  to 
his  thoughts.  He  resolves  nature  into  a  pabulum, 
which  by  mystery  evolves  stomachs,  and  these  pro- 
duce men  and  women  ;  but  his  view  capacitates  him 
for  no  vision  beyond  some  profession  of  rag-picking 
on  the  way  to  paper,  or  some  factory  of  extractum 
carnis  where  flocks  and  herds  end  in  soap,  or  beef- 
tea.  This  aspiration,  to  be  above  one's  own  mind, 
and  this  insurrection  of  men  against  the  uses  they 
could  fulfil  admirably,  this  pushing  into  some  other 
place  and  station  than  one's  own  ;  the  determination 
of  these  comedians  to  deal  only  with  tragedy  ;  of 
these  salaried  clerks  of  matter  to  be  high  priests 
over  the  mind  and  the  soul,  would  be  only  ridicu- 
lous if  they  had  no  audiences,  and  if  holy  things 
were  not  involved;  but  they  deride  the  Lord;  and 
there  are  masses  of  men  and  women  under  tliem, 
listening  to  their  words,  and  ignorantly  believing 
that  a  professor  great  in  light  and  heat,  or  in 
physiology,  when  he  is  annually  voted  to  the  throne 
of  science  in  those  realms,  becomes  oracular  on  every 


subject  upon  which  he  opens  his  mouth.  As  if  every 
butler  became  a  duke  in  the  servants'  hall  of  science. 
Thence  the  spread  of  wrong  places,  in  other  words, 
of  ignorant  arrogance,  all  through  society.  Thence 
a  papacy  in  science;  a  voted  infallibility  in  its  little 
intellect;  and  practical  deeds  of  devils  on  the  maxim 
that  science  can  do  no  wronof. 


LXVII. 


SPIRITISM. 


These  states  of  science  involve  a  singular  delicacy 
of  position ;  the  bubble  has  to  balance  itself  nicely 
between  inward  and  outward  forces,  and  to  work  out 
its  own  precarious  salvation  with  fear  and  trembling. 
It  can  afford  no  fair  sailing;  there  are  so  many  cur- 
rents that  would  burst  it.     The  human  heart  is  a 
rock  ahead.     Birth  and  love  and  death  are  very  rude 
to  it;  and  for  the  most  part  it  absents  itself  from 
festive  and  funeral  occasions;  for  nearly  all  hearts 
cuff*  and  abominate  it  there,  as  the  kingdom  of  birds 
cuffs  an  owl  out  in  the  daytime.     The  livino-  groves 
detest  it.   But  there  is  one  special  combatant  which  it 
has  to  meet,  and  must  meet,  to  wit,  spiritism,  which  is 
indeed  the  hete  noire  of  modern  materialism.     Here 
science  quits  her  avowed  tactics;  and  her  prepara- 
tion for   the   fight  with   this   arch    enemy  consists 
in  no  buckling  on  of  armour;  that  she  leaves  to  pro- 
fessional jugglers;  but  in  putting  her  head  into  a 
bush  of  thorny  dislikes,  and  exposing  behind   the 
proportions  of  her  materialism.      In  a  word,   she 
voluntarily  puts  out  all  her  senses,  and  puts  on  all 
her  pretexts^  before   the  encounter.      Whether  so 

B 


258 


SPIRITISM. 


SPIRITISM, 


much  agonized  fear  of  the  question,  and  so  much 
heat  of  hatred  against  a  verdict  on  the  other  side, 
is  a  usual  condition  of  successful  inquiry,  let  science 
herself  decide;  but  of  the  magnitude  of  her  horror, 
and  of  its  incapacity  to  reason  and  experiment,  the 
history  of  the  pending  controversy  is  full. 

To  tliose  who  have  investigated  the  phenomena 
of  spiritism  without  foregone  aversion,  it  is  easy  to 
see  that  scientism  lies  at  the  mercy  of  the  affirmative 
side.  No  negative  article  is  written  about  it  that 
does  more  than  reiterate  in  one  form  of  phrase  or 
another,  that  it  is  of  course  all  delusion  and  impos- 
ture, A  crowd  of  creeds,  from  atheism  to  Calvinism, 
are  the  rifle  pits  from  which  it  is  attacked  ;  these 
are  kept  as  invisible  as  possible  ;  but  the  noisy  rifles 
never  hit  the  subject  or  its  professors,  because  they 
are  only  hatreds,  and  charged  with  no  scientific  balls. 
Several  distinguished  men  of  science  have  already 
succumbed  to  the  invincible  evidence  oflered  by 
spiritism.  The  rest  in  the  main  must  follow.  For 
the  battle  of  evidence 

'^  once  begun, 
Tho'  baffled  oft,  is  ever  won." 

This  will  confound  the  front  of  science  in  so  far  as 
materialism  is  pushing  it  to  the  unknown;  it  will 
show  that  all  motions  cannot  be  resolved  into  forces, 
but  that  you  meet  the  human  forms  of  men  and 
women  at  the  other  end  :  that  the  deeps,  generally 
invisible,  are  compulsorily  and  cogently  personal. 
It  will  show  that  there  is  another  world  which  is 
one  with  this  world,  and  thus  as  in  the  old  Edda,  it 
will  break  in  the  crown  of  the  stone-headed  giant. 
materialism,  with  his  own  iron  pot ;  for  the  Thor  of 
mere  naturahstic  fact  here  smites  him.  It  will  con- 
tradict before  the  common  world  the  position  that 


259 


the  amount  of  force  in  nature  is  necessarily  one  and 
constant,  by  showing  invisible  wills  become  visible, 
and  added  momentaneously  to  the  force  of  the  race 
and  the  push  of  the  world.     It  will  show  that  the 
dogmas  of  matter  are  relative,  not  absolute,  and  that 
impenetrability,  hardness,  space,  time,  &c.,  are  only 
leased  conditions,  and  can  be  suspended  at  will.     It 
will  show  that  materialism  is  a  disease,  a  polysarkia, 
and  tliat  the  bigger  mankind  is  with  it,  the  weaker  it 
is,  and  the  more  immovable;  and  that  most  of  the  pre- 
sent canons  of  scientific  thought  are  but  the  symp- 
toms of  grave  sickness  in  bedridden  sciences.      It 
will  show  science  that  men  and  women,  when  they 
die,  are  not  dust  and  ashes,  but  people,  and  comport 
themselves  very  much  as  they  do  in  this  world.     It 
will  not  show  anything  of  God  but  to  the  godly,  or 
of  the  Lord  but  to  those  who  receive  Him  already; 
but  it  may  lead  up  minds  towards   higher  places 
where  new  powers  of  receiving  truth  are  given.     It 
may,  or  it  may  not.     But  at  any  rate  its  influence 
on  future  scientism  is  unquestionable,  and  must  be 
calculated  by  those  with  whom  progress  is  the  word. 
It  seems  to  lie  in  far  countries  outside  the  pagan 
papal  Eome  of  scientific  culture,  comfort  and  splen- 
dour; and  to  have  no  relation  to  its  geography  at  all. 
Yet  in  the  great  central  city  there  is  a  rumour  of  it. 
There  will  one  day  be  a  cloud  of  it,  horse  and  foot 
and  flags,  seen  from  the  walls.     There  will  be  a  de- 
structive spirit  Attila  in  the  city  of  science.     There 
will  be  capitulation,  and  whatever  Attila  involves. 

This  end  of  a  mental  state  is  felt  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  medico-scientific  cliques.  It  is  demonstrated 
by  the  quick  instinct  with  which  they  close  ranks 
against  the  admission  of  anything  but  material  and 
carnal  truth;  and  by  their  instant  attack  on  all  but 


26o 


SPIRITISM. 


respectable  phenomena.  Every  fresh  birth  of  the 
other  order  comes  into  a  world  of  sticks  and  staves 
bent  upon  destroying  it;  into  a  world  of  Herods. 
Some  poor  fasting  girl  is  treated  as  dynamite  which 
may  blow  up  the  colleges,  and  carefully  extinguished 
as  dangerous  to  knowledge.  '^  Peculiar  People/'  and 
those  who  pray  for  health,  are  hunted  down  and  ex- 
terminated. Mesmerism,  and  such  practices,  are 
stamped  out  with  fiery  heels.  Medical  men,  poor 
things,  are  voted  by  the  rest  to  know  all  about  it; 
especially  because  they  have  certificates  of  insanity 
in  their  power;  and  they  are  abused  by  the  rest 
to  tell  the  world  that  leeching  and  blisters  would 
have  cured  the  disease,  revelation,  had  they  been 
applied  behind  its  two  ears,  Jew  and  Christian, 
early  enough.  By  these  means  science  goes  on 
armour-plating  itself;  and  angrily  stopping  up  every 
hole  of  attack;  and  especially  at  length,  for  dear 
safety's  sake,  those  five  holes  called  eyes,  nose,  ears, 
taste,  and  touch.  When  the  process  is  complete, 
science,  for  fear  of  death,  will  have  succumbed  to 
herself  as  her  undertaker.  For  fear  curdles  into 
death,  especially  the  fear  of  the  supernatural;  it  pre- 
cludes observation,  and  destroys  sight,  and  gives 
cruel  lunges  all  round  at  everything  suspect;  it 
faints  as  it  acts,  finding  a  terrible  afterthought  from 
mere  air  and  non-resistance.  At  present  it  is  im- 
possible to  deny  that  this  fear  of  ghosts  is  running 
cold  down  the  back  of  scientism. 

Beyond  what  has  been  already  expressed,  that 
spiritism  may  break  up  gross  infidelity,  by  demon- 
strating to  sense  that  persons  are  bodily  persons 
still  though  their  once  bodies  have  been  put  aside, 
no  heed  can  be  taken  of  the  subject  by  the  New 
Church,  for  it  is  at  best  a  set  of  permitted  human 


SPIRITISM, 


26r 


exposures,  only  important  according  to  their  truth, 
which  here  is  of  the  lowest  elements.  The  mani- 
festing spirits  seem  to  exhaust  their  mission  in  show- 
ing themselves.  That  they  have  heads,  and  legs, 
and  arms,  is  the  pith  of  their  revelation;  a  lesson  for 
materialism  to  learn.  For  the  rest,  they  talk  like 
common  folks,  and  give  out  no  more  light  than  the 
commonalty  does  in  general.  As  well  ask  your 
costermonger  the  constitution  of  the  natural  world, 
when  a  Newton  is  wanted;  or  about  the  constitution 
of  the  spiritual  world,  when  a  Swedenborg  is  re- 
quired, as  converse  with  spirits  upon  their  opinions. 
Perhaps,  however,  one  other  result  accrues  for 
spiritism  of  experiment ;  for  it  brings  down  to  itself 
as  a  nucleus,  the  true  ghost-histories  of  all  ages  and 
nations,  which  have  kept  a  belief  in  immortality 
alive  in  the  darkest  times  and  places,  and  helps  to 
pile  them  into  a  record.  And  on  the  practical  side, 
it  is  certain  that  spiritism  takes  away,  except  from 
scientific  professors,  the  awful  fear  of  ghosts;  for 
children  brought  up  in  spiritism,  of  whom  there  are 
now  some  millions,  are  almost  devoid  of  horrors  of 
the  kind.  This  is  important  for  the  health  of  brain 
and  mind;  a  temporary  branch  of  healing.  It  is 
not  to  be  attained  by  the  scientific  way  of  denying 
spirits;  but  by  recognizing  them  as  facts,  and  under- 
standing who  they  are.  It  may  thus  be  blessed  in 
being  of  service  to  some  little  children. 

The  facts  of  spiritism  then  are  true,  though  not 
the  babble,  excepting  that  it  is  real  babble;  and 
being  true  they  are  correlated  to  science,  and  must 
be  taken  account  of;  no  matter  if  the  field  be  low, 
and  deal  with  the  correlation  of  tinker  below  with 
tinker  above,  still  it  is  correspondence  and  correla- 
tion, and  walks  the  bridge  of  reality;  and  in  this 


262 


POSSESSION  AND  SUPERSTITION. 


POSSESSION  AND  SUPERSTITION 


263 


>k 


|| 


if 


respect  is  unlike  many  religious  creeds,  and  unlike 
atheism   and    materialism,    which    are    the    formal 
knowledges   of  nonentity.     The    worst    feature   of 
spiritism  is,  that  it  leads  frivolous  persons  to  ask 
Tom,   Dick  and  Harry  of  the   ^'  spirit-life,"  what 
their  views  are  of  God  and  the  universe;  and  to 
place  importance  in  the  answers  because  they  are 
spoken  from  the  presumed  higher  rostrum  of  the 
other  life,  wliicli  may  turn  out  to  be  impertinence 
from  the  spiritual  pillory.     Yet  this  misfortune  of 
table  turners  is  correlated  in  the  audiences  of  the 
British  Association,  who  ask  molecular  philosophers 
and  violationists  to  enlicrhten  them  about  the  orisrin 
of  things;   and  do  not  reckon  that  "materialized" 
ghosts  under  the  table  of  science  cannot  tell  greater 
or  more  misleading  lies  on  subjects  beyond  their  own 
menial  lives,  than  tortured  livinor  doo^s  tell  throuofh 
their  philosophers  about  similar  high  subjects,  upon 
the  top  of  the  same  scientific  table. 


LXVIII. 

POSSESSION   AND    SUPERSTITION. 

If  these  views  be  correct,  science  is  on  the  way  to 
all  that  it  now  regards  as  most  superstitious.  In 
this  connection  Swedenborg  comes  to  hand  with 
spiritual  experience  of  an  important  kind;  for  lie 
noticed  in  the  other  life  that  those  scientists  who 
deny  God  and  worsliip  nature,  become  magicians 
after  death,  and  cultivate  the  black  art  with  assi- 
duity. They  work  by  the  perversion  of  corre- 
spondences, being  jugglers  in  real  things.  Thus,— 
certain  forms  allocated  together,  from  the  universal 


life  of  the  spiritual  world  have  organic  functions; 
and  by  managing  the  forms,  the  influx  is  determined 
into  definite  channels  of  evil  power,  of  which  pos- 
session is  one.  They  can  make  false  brains  in  other 
people's  brains,  and  so  hold  the  proper  mind  in 
abeyance  even  in  its  own  kingdom.  This  is  often 
done  here,  but  mentally  only;  in  the  spiritual  world 
it  is  done  bodily  also.  The  Lord  came  into  the 
world  to  overrule  it.  Now  the  superstitions  of 
matter,  which  get  into  nature  to  eliminate  God,  are 
the  preparation  for  these  direful  doings  in  the  other 
life;  they  are  fungi  of  the  lust  of  power  over  minds, 
which  at  present  shed  their  spores  all  through  the 
brain  of  science.  Once  give  in  to  a  passion  for  root- 
ing religion  out  of  man,  and  placing  matter  in  its 
stead,  and  you  have  the  condition  of  infernal  magic 
within  you;  and  are  equipped  for  the  career  of  a 
possessing  demon.  This  new  chapter,  as  was  said  be- 
fore, correlates  exactly  with  mental  possession  here; 
with  the  aims  of  the  papacies  both  of  ecclesiastical 
and  material  science.  Like  the  rest  which  Sweden- 
borg avers,  it  is  but  the  revealed  branches  of  a  tree 
whose  roots  are  visible  and  tangible  in  the  common 
experience  of  mankind. 

Superstition  may  be  defined  as  a  fixation  of  the 
mind  in  the  belief  of  inadequate  causes  and  reasons, 
and  the  expectation  of  consequences  from  those 
causes,  and  of  lidit  from  those  reasons;  as  when  a 
man  prays  to  an  idol  of  his  own  making,  and  looks 
for  help  from  it ;  or  poses  a  cell  germ,  and  blows  it 
up  into  a  god.  On  this  showing,  is  not  the  faith 
that  the  secrets  of  nature  can  be  tortured  ftoni  her 
by  violation  of  life,  a  superstition  of  the  Dahomey 
kind?  Is  not  the  belief  that  the  five  senses  embrace 
all  reality,  and  that  other  senses  than  these  showing 


264 


POSSESSION  AND  SUPERSTITION 


POSSESSION  AND  SUPERSTITION 


265 


a  new  world,  cannot  be  opened,  a  superstitious 
negation  ?  Is  not  the  conviction  that  science  can 
ultimately  comprehend  nature,  a  belief  in  an  intel- 
lectual fetish  ?  Is  not  the  worship  of  intellect  irre- 
spective of  the  regeneration  of  the  heart,  an  artifice 
of  evil  and  a  moral  fetish  ?  Is  not  tlie  article,  that 
an  audacious  scientist  is  ex  officio  a  consulting  theo- 
logian, a  superstitious  position  ?  Is  he  not  on  this 
assumed  platform  as  an  idol  of  wood  or  stone,  with 
the  misfortune  of  seeming  to  be  alive  in  his  mouth  ? 
Observe,  the  holding  of  these  beliefs  in  suspense  in 
the  mind  does  not  constitute  superstition ;  it  may 
constitute  unhealth,  or  feebleness,  and  arise  from 
incapacity  to  dispel  prevalent  clouds  cf  opinion;  but 
it  is  the  fixinof  or  materializinof  them:  the  beins:  cer- 
tain  of  a  number  of  absurdities  of  negation,  and 
infinites  of  the  finite;  and  applying  them  from  the 
nursery  to  the  church,  as  education  and  thought, 
that  makes  them  into  wood  and  stone  of  the 
faculties,  before  whose  awful  pretension  the  scientific 
mind  bows  down  in  its  annual  temple. 

To  the  claims  of  the  incarnation  and  the  Divine 
Humanity  as  the  suj^reme  facts  of  nature,  and 
therefore  the  supreme  objects  of  science ;  also  of 
the  historical  existence  of  faculties  in  man  which 
apprehend  a  world  superior  to  nature  ;  to  the  line  of 
religious  descent  from  Jehovah  the  Creator  to  the 
Lord  the  Redeemer;  to  the  sacred  books  and 
histories  of  nations,  and  to  the  prophets  and  seers 
of  the  Bible,  the  science  of  the  day  has  only  for 
answer,  immaturity  of  brain,  or  disorder  uf  the  ima- 
gination. It  is  the  largest  notice  to  quit  ever  given 
in  this  world,  with  the  smallest  power  to  enforce  the 
notice  at  the  back  of  it.  The  notice  returns  upon 
the  prosecutors.     Why  are  not  their  states  of  mind 


imperfect  and  disorderly?  The  disbelief  in  spirit  is 
a  paralysis  of  imagination  arising  in  the  chiefs  from 
a  stony  heart;  inward  and  outward  disease  combin- 
ing in  their  discourses.  Disbelief  in  the  Lord  is 
paralysis  of  process,  whereby  scientific  hands  cannot 
feel  or  grasp  when  they  touch  the  greatest  fact  on 
record  ;  a  thing  solid  to  every  faculty  when  it  is 
informed,  and  not  diseased.  The  non-examination 
of  Swedenborgs  writings  because  scientific  minds 
dislike  them,  is  a  failure  of  reason  before  evidence, 
and  unfairness  pleaded  as  a  method;  a  principle  of 
elimination  which  is  a  corruption  of  mental  justice; 
a  disease  of  the  social  brain.  The  catalogue  of  these 
diseases  might  be  endless  in  detail,  for  one  of 
them  is  in  face  of  every  great  and  living  truth,  and 
formally  ignores  its  life-giving  power.  It  is  futile 
to  talk  of  revelations  as  diseases,  without  remember- 
ing that  scientisms  are  diseases.  Truly  there  may 
be  false  revelations,  and  impostures  of  revelation; 
but  so  also  from  the  beginning  there  are  false  and 
evil  sciences,  and  arrogancies  of  science;  the  reason 
is,  that  the  human  will  has  its  own  part,  of  freedom, 
to  play,  in  both  departments;  and  it  mixes  evil  with 
the  good,  and  folly  with  the  wisdom,  of  either.  The 
conclusion  is,  that  those  who  throw  away  revelation 
because  it  has  "  outlived  their  liking,"  give  no 
security  that  they  will  not  some  day  throw  awaj^ 
science  for  the  same  spreading  reason  of  aversion. 
It  is  the  human  mind  that  is  here  at  stake,  and 
in  its  present  mood,  insecurity  is  strongly  inscribed 
upon  the  disorderly  processes  of  its  collective 
brain. 

The  argument  that  the  spiritual  world  is  a  creation 
of  a  diseased  imagination  and  fancy,  is  met  by  the 
fact,  that  the  denial  of  that  world  is  a  result  of  the 


266 


POSSESSION  AND  SUPERSTITION 


POSSESSION  AND  SUPERSTITION 


267 


blindness  of    the  understanding    arising   from  the 
hardness  of  the  heart. 

To  give  up  Jehovah  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
Jesus  of  the  New,  for  vague  and  trumpery  material 
guesses,  is  a  lunacy  like  that  of  supposing  one's  own 
straw  to  be  the  sceptre  of  the  universe.  The 
exchanging  of  such  things  for  such  things,  shows  a 
total  want  of  number,  weight,  and  measure,  in  the 
interior  mind ;  and  consummated  superstition. 

To  teach  doubt  and  denial  of  holy  things ;  and 
doubt  and  denial  which  in  the  intentions  of  their 
authors  must  go  into  the  nursery,  the  infant  school 
and  into  all  education,  implies  a  dreadful  disease  in 
tlie  adult  heart.  It  may  be  said,  these  things  must 
be  taught  if  they  are  true;  but  then  observe,  they 
are  evil;  and  it  is  a  complication  of  disease  of  the 
moral  heart  with  disease  of  the  corresponding  lungs 
and  brain,  not  to  know,  that  no  truths  are  evil;  and 
that  those  positions  which  are  evil  are  false  also. 
As  stated  before,  Swedenborg  has  demonstrated 
that  good  is  primary;  produces  all  truth  as  heat 
produces  light;  coheres  with  it;  attests  it;  and  is 
its  living  and  justifying  heart  and  soul.  And  it  is 
goodness  within  that  makes  any  truth  into  the  daily 
bread  of  education. 

The  common  truths  of  religion,  such  as  the 
fatherhood  of  God,  His  divine  goodness  and  love  to 
man,  consequently,  His  Word,  His  divine  instruc- 
tion through  revelations  and  churches,  His  coming 
when  it  was  needed,  by  incarnation ;  thus  His 
redemption  of  fallen  human  nature  ;  His  second 
comino-  bv  an  illuminated  human  mind,  are  the 
grand  truths  of  creation;  and  brought  down  into  the 
natural  understanding,  they  may  submit  to  be  called 
a  rational  theory  of  nature,  because  they  are  trutlis 


regarding  the  purpose  of  man,  who  is  the  end  of 
the  creation.  To  give  up  these  facts  until  other 
better  and  more  explicit  ones  producing  the  same 
ends  are  announced  in  detail,  is  to  give  up  the 
human  faculties  : 

'^  To  enter  again  the  ancient  sty, 
Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die." 

Criticism  is  an  organ  that  does  not  deal  with 
nature  or  spirit,  but  with  art;  hence,  whatever  sub- 
jects are  moved  from  the  domain  of  human  into  that 
of  divine  authorship,  are  no  longer  amenable  to 
criticism,  but  to  enlightened  understanding,  to  that 
faculty  which  deals  with  truths,  and  to  that  science 
which  leads  up  to  truth.  Through  Swedenborg, 
the  Word,  as  demonstrably  divine,  has  swept  wdth 
all  its  stars  into  the  upper  heaven  of  science,  and 
criticism  has  no  telescope  which  reaches  its  facts. 
After  counting  the  letters  of  the  letter,  the  critical 
method  surceases;  and  reverent  sciences  themselves 
revealed  for  the  purpose,  take  up  the  divine  natural 
theme,  the  heaven  within  the  Word. 

Churches  and  states  may  be  in  full  decay,  but 
there  is  a  remnant  of  j)ersons  who  individually  are 
not  involved  in  the  ruin.  Evil  practices  may  pre- 
vail, yet  some  who  are  led  by  superior  example  to 
follow  them,  may  not  be  criminal  in  their  hearts. 
It  is  the  general  sphere  which  is  lost,  and  the 
leaders,  the  dominant  affections,  which  are  to  blame. 
Thus  in  the  foregoing  pages,  whatever  is  said  of  the 
evils  of  science,  of  its  atheism,  and  cruelty,  is  not 
applied  to  particular  men;  for  no  doubt  there  are 
violators  of  life  who  think  they  are  in  the  way  of 
truth,  and  therefore  justified,  with  weak  heads  and 
natures    gradually    taking    this     persuasion    from 


1; 


268 


THE  FIRST  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH 


J 


others.  It  is  the  general  realm  of  conscience  and 
understanding  which  is  destroyed;  and  all  wills  are 
destroyed  that  inhabit  it;  yet  as  individuals  many 
will  come  out,  abjure  it  at  length,  enter  regeneration 
and  gain  a  new  will,  and  belong  to  another  order. 
Thus  much  is  necessary  to  be  repeated  here,  lest  it 
be  thought  that  spiritual  wickedness  of  the  will  is 
charged  upon  those  who  are  led  in  blindness  and 
weak  deference  to  do  things  which  are  wrong  in  the 
name  of  class  and  science.  Judgment  against  the 
evil  thing  is  general  and  final;  the  judgment  on 
each  person  involved  in  the  charge,  is  particular, 
and  according  to  his  affections,  intentions  and  oppor 
tunities,  he  receives  acquittal,  or  condemnation,  and 
is  led  upwards,  or  downwards. 


LXIX. 

THE    FIRST    CHRISTIAN    CHURCH. 

It  now  remains,  after  long  apparent  digression,  to 
pursue  the  natural  stream  of  divine  communications 
which  at  length  resulted  in  the  commission  of 
Swedenborg.  In,  and  after,  the  incarnation,  an 
everlasting  church  was  founded  in  the  person  of  the 
the  Lord.  The  divine  Leader  had  appeared,  and  in 
nature,  as  a  man.  He  was  Lord  of  nature.  The 
world  was  redeemed  from  the  overbalance  of  evil, 
and  freewill  was  restored  to  man.  The  early  Chris- 
tians absorbed  His  life  in  their  hearts,  and  grew 
from  it.  They  knew  and  acknowledged  His  divi- 
nity of  which  their  consciousness  was  full.  They 
were  a  simple  though  a  commissioned  people;  and 


THE  FIRST  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  269 

had  to  confront  the  old  world,  and  if  possible  to 
conquer  it.     They  waged  holy  war  personally,  but 
history  shows  that  they  could  not  conquer  the  world 
as  a  general  sphere  of  infernal  power.     The  history 
of  the  first  Christian  Church  is  a  record  of  indivi- 
duals  martyred   for    the   good    of  the   truth,    but 
becoming   fewer   and   fewer   in   i3roportion   as   the 
Church  extended,  until  the  organization   of  eccle- 
siastical  empire   absorbed   them  all,    and    the    old 
heathenisms  with  modified  rites  and  doctrines  were 
handed   down   under   the   name    of   the    Christian 
Church.     In  course  of  time,  every  fact  and  doctrine 
that  the  Lord  came   into   the  world  to    establish 
was  altered  and  subverted.     The  simple  apostolate 
became  a  hierarchy,  like  the  Babylonian,  Assyrian, 
and  Egyptian  priesthoods.     Its  love  of  power  over 
the  bodies  and  souls  of  men  is  written  in  the  wars  and 
persecutions  of  eighteen  centuries.     The  combat  of 
the  Lord  against  the  hells,  whereby  He  became  one 
with  Jehovah,  is  lost  in  a  doctrine  of  three  persons 
with  unintelligible  functions,  and  witli  the  mystery 
of  evil   constituted  in   the  person  of  the    Father. 
The  unity  of  the  Lord  is  not  in  the  Church.     The 
doctrine   of  faith   alone   attempts   to    lay   hold   of 
redemption,    and  leave  out   regeneration,    and   yet 
grasp  salvation,  making  creed  and  assurance  of  all 
account,  and  the  man  and  the  daily  life,  of  shunning 
evils  as  sins  first,  and  then  doing  good  afterwards,  oi 
no  account.     Hereby  ecclesiasticized  religion  has' no 
reference  to  conduct,  but  much  to  external  appear- 
ances, and  the  bettering  of  this  world  is  hopelessly 
referred  to  the  future  world.      The  knowledge  of 
God  gradually  lost,  and  the  divinity  of  honesty  un- 
recognized, the   mind  had  no  sources  of  spiritual 
perception  left,  and  consequently  darkness,  spiritual 


270 


THE  FIRST  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH, 


1 


l< 


k\ 


ii 


darkness,  has  more  and  more  invaded  the  churches, 
until  they  can  no  longer  answer  a  single  question  of 
the  common  heart.  Thence  theology  is  declared  to 
be  unprogressive,  the  quod  semper,  quod  iihique,  quod 
ah  omnibus,  becomes  the  rule  of  belief;  and  the 
papacy  appealed  to  on  any  question  simply  answers, 
'^As  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is  now,  and  ever  shall 
be."  In  this  way  religion  stands  quite  isolated 
from  the  faculties,  and  is  a  foreign  body  in  the 
rational  being.  The  churches,  failing  to  be  the 
embodiment  of  the  divine  humanity,  and  to  hold 
humanity  with  its  common  life  and  mental  faculties 
in  their  folds,  have  invented  their  privilege  as  '*  the 
mystical  body  of  Christ,"  and  plead  their  own  un- 
assailable authority  as  a  doctrinal  organon.  The 
arbitrary  assertion  of  spiritual  power  is  wliat  is  left 
to  them;  and  they  attempt  to  make  this  co-extensive 
with  temporal  power.  The  sun  of  revelation  has 
set  into  priesthoods.  This  is  the  end  of  the  old 
Christian  Church.  It  happened  because  love,  the 
only  charity,  and  with  it  the  light  of  truth,  the 
proper  field  of  faith,  diminished,  and  died  out,  age 
after  age;  and  the  truths  of  doctrine,  which  are  the 
embodiments,  advanced  positions,  and  defences  of 
the  divine  love  and  wisdom  in  men,  also  died,  and 
monstrous  beliefs  took  their  place. 

This  can  be  read  in  history  by  those  who  discard 
mystery  from  their  minds  as  a  mode  of  explaining 
the  past.  But  what  cannot  be  read  except  in 
Swedenborg  is  the  dignus  vindex  Deus,  God  present 
for  the  occasion  and  the  need.  In  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  about  1745,  the  Lord  in  a  personal  pre- 
sence appeared  to  him  in  London,  and  opened  his 
spiritual  senses,  that  he  might  perceive  and  declare 
the  things  in  the  spiritual  world.     He  also  opened 


THE  LAST  JUDGMENT  IN  1757. 


271 


and  illuminated  his  mind,  that  he  might  receive  and 
write  down  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  Holy  Scripture. 
And  He  taught  him,  through  the  Word  thus  un- 
folded, the  true  doctrine  regarding  Himself:  how 
that  all  Scripture  portended,  and  was  fulfilled  in,  the 
divine  humanity  which  He  assumed  when  His  con- 
quest over  the  universes  of  evil  was  complete.  He 
reinstated  in  knowledge,  love  as  the  central  sun,  and 
Himself  as  the  divine  love  and  the  divine  man 
within  it — in  ejus  medio  residet  Jehovah  Deus ;  and 
gave  new  doctrines  of  charity  and  life  to  man,  con- 
stituting on  the  earth  the  body  and  substance  of  a 
New  Church  of  mere  regeneration.  Not  a  mystical 
body,  but  a  luminous  body  of  self-evident  truths, 
supported  and  shining  by  the  serviceable  good  within 
them  ;  a  veritable  body  of  the  Lord,  adequate  in  us 
for  the  whole  duty  of  man,  and  for  the  right  conduct 
of  all  the  business  of  this  life. 


LXX. 

THE    LAST   JUDGMENT    IN    1757. 

When  Swedenborg  was  thus  prepared,  and  after 
he  had  been  for  twelve  years  a  denizen  of  both  the 
spiritual  and  the  natural  worlds,  the  last  judgment, 
on  the  dead  Christian  Church,  took  place  in  the 
spiritual  world  ;  and  he  was  commissioned  to  Avitness 
the  mode  of  it.  This  was  in  1757.  The  reader  w411 
remember  that  similar  judgments  on  the  Adamic 
Church,  on  the  Noahtic  Church,  and  on  the  Jewitrh 
Church,  had  taken  place  already.  One  common 
necessity  brought  them  all;  the  necessity  of  the 
restoration  of  the  equilibrium  between  good  and  evil, 


272 


THE  LAST  JUDGMENT  IN  1757. 


and  thus  of  divine  order,  among  men  and  spirits  : 
the  necessity  of  saving  freewill,  which  is  man,  from 
hell,  w^hich  is  his  antagonist. 

Mighty  as  such  things  are,  they  are  now  among 
the  least  mysterious  of  events.  There  is  a  supreme 
Lord  ruling  the  two  universes  of  this  world  and  the 
other.  Nations  and  peoples  are  either  getting  better 
or  worse  :  if  worse,  they  are  sinking  from  evil  to 
evil.  As  they  die,  every  generation  of  them  is  trans- 
planted into  the  spiritual  world.  This  follows  the 
fortunes  of  the  natural  world,  and  is  filled  with  evil 
men  and  women,  w^ho  form  societies  corresponding 
to  the  inner  lives  of  the  societies  which  the  same 
men  and  women  have  left  on  earth.  These  societies 
cohere  by  correspondence,  by  sympathy,  and  mu- 
tuality of  action,  by  mutual  attraction,  on  tlie  two 
sides  of  the  veil;  they  cannot  but  co-act,  because  they 
are  spiritually  similar,  and  spirit  is  in  similarity,  not 
in  place.  The  upper  tier  of  evil  people  pervert  the 
love  and  light  of  heaven,  and  shut  it  from  the  lower, 
just  as  they  do  in  this  w^orld.  The  understanding  of 
divine  things  perishes  in  the  upper  darkness ;  and 
the  love  of  the  same  things  is  supplanted  by  deep 
within  deep  of  influent  into  inherent  selfish  lusts. 
Hell  has  the  upper  hand.  For  such  a  state  of  things 
there  is  no  human  cure  ;  great  men  cannot  be  raised 
up  in  it,  but  great  and  destroying  demons,  still  con- 
trolled by  the  Lord's  Divine  Providence,  come  forth. 
Here  is  dignus  vindice  nodus;  a  last  cry  of  creation 
for  God  the  Redeemer. 

Put  aside  atheism  and  annihilation  as  drunkenness ; 
discard  the  grave  as  holding  any  man;  refuse  all 
word  of  progress  for  evil ;  refuse  evil  as  undeveloped 
f^ood;  see  human  characters  in  human  persons  as 
immortal;  abash  the  thought  that  nothing  can  be 


THE  LAST  JUDGMENT  IN  1757.  273 

known  of  spiritual  things  because  you  yourself  know 
nothing ;  and  it  is  impossible  not  to  recognize  from 
history  the  need  for  timely  judgments  of  God  if  the 
human  race  is  to  be  saved  from  destruction.  It  is 
impossible  not  to  recognize  that  Last  Judgments 
have  taken  place  before  the  revivals  of  the  race  in 
Judaism,  in  Christianity,  and  now  in  the  Church  of 
the  New  Jerusalem. 

Per  contra,  were  atheism  true,  there  would  be  no 
judging  power.     Were  the  sleep  of  the  grave  true, 
there  would  be  no  population  to  be  judged;  but  the 
generations   would    be   cleared  off  by  the  worms. 
Were  evil  good  in  the  making,  and  wickedness  but 
imperfection,    progress   w^ould   be   ensured   by  the 
ferments  of  sin ;  the  selfishness  of  the  w^hole  world 
would  redeem  that  of  its  nations,  and  the  selfhood 
of  nations  purify  the  selfhood  of  individuals.     But 
then  as  surely  as  these  positions  are  lies,  so  surely 
the  now  revealed  fact  and  doctrine  of  the  judgment 
of  those  great  spiritual  societies  called  churches,  in 
both  worlds,  are  true  and  substantial.     Here,  the 
science  of  history  will   attest   the   facts;   and   the 
merciful  interposition  of  the  Lord,  which  is  now  a 
revealed    truth,    and    a    scientific    complement    to 
historical  science,  shows  how  the  facts,  unmanage- 
able by  man,  are  met,  and  grappled  with,  in  His 
divine  statesmanship.     It  is  nothing  else  than  the 
supreme  government  of  the  universe  reasserted  on 
the  supreme  scale  in  regard  to  the  gathered  societies 
of  ages.     It  is  a  necessary  fact  in  the  history  of  im- 
mortal beings,  men  and  women. 

Each  church,  so  long  as  it  is  faithful  to  the  divine 
love  and  light  within  it,  is  the  centre  of  the  world, 
and  governs  or  modifies  the  circumferences,  the  out- 
lying nations  and  peoples,  from  that  centre ;  just  as 

s 


274  THE  LAST  JUDGMENT  IN  1757. 

in  a  single  person,  each  of  whom  is  the  church  in  its 
least  form,  the  religion  is  the  central  fact  which 
modifies  the  life.     In  other  words,  each  church  dis- 
pensation (we  do  not  now  speak  of  ecclesiasticism) 
is  the  medium  by  which  the  Lord,  through  heaven, 
communicates  with   mankind.      And  being  in  the 
ultimate    world,    i.e,,  nature,  this   church   is  "  the 
complex,  continent,  and  basis"  of  the  heavens  above 
it.      They  rest  upon  its  integrity.     And  when  it 
perishes,  a  new  dispensation  is  a  necessity  of  the 
position.     Nevertheless,  the  whole  of  the  old  state 
is  left  in  the  world,  and  has  to  be  disposed  of,  and 
gradually,  as  the  freewill  of  mankind  permits,  to  die 
out.      Nothing  violent  is  effected  at  once  against 
obdurate    priesthoods    and    ecclesiasticisms    here ; 
having  no  internal  perception,  they  are  unaware  of 
their  supersession  by  another  order  of  things,  and  go 
on  apparently  as  before.      What  has  happened  is, 
that   the  Lord   has   left   them,   and  they  gain  no 
radiation  from  Him  as  a  centre,  but  they  still  possess 
an  abundant  selfish  life  both  inherent  and  influent. 
They  contain  multitudes  of  individuals  who  belong 
really  to  the  new  order  of  things ;  who  receive  its 
influx;  and  carry  it  out  into  new  lives.     By  the 
preponderance  of   these   individuals    they  may  be 
transformed    into    organic    branches   of   the    New 
Church.     In  speaking  therefore  of  the  passing  away 
of  the  old  church,  the  meaning   is   that   the  dis- 
pensation is  closed,  not  the  voluntary  churches  and 
chapels  of  any  people ;  many  of  these  may  and  will 
be  opened  to  receive  the  next  dispensation.     Many 
also  will   not,  but  like  the  Jews  will  adhere  ex- 
ternally and  literally  to  forms  of  truth  that  are  no 
longer  true,  because  they  have  lost  their  good.    The 
reception  of  the  new  love  and  light  in  the  conscience 


THE  LAST  JUDGMENT  IN  1757.  275 

and  intellect,  and  their  transference  ultimately  to  the 
heart  through  all  daily  duties  done  in  their  service, 
thus  the  doctrines  of  God  become,  reverently  speak- 
ing, the  practices  and  habits  and  callings  of  men,  are 
the  credentials  to  the  faithful  of  their  part  in  the 
new  dispensation.  The  old  church  passed  away 
because  of  all  its  primitive  doctrines  not  one  was 
left  that  could  open  down  into  the  conduct  of  life, 
and  steadily  insist  upon  men  becoming  in  their 
weekday  affairs  better  and  wiser  from  the  Lord;  the 
New  Church  has  arrived  ;  and  its  doctrines,  flowing 
out  of  tlie  gospels,  and  from  all  the  Word,  through 
rational  channels,  run  directly  into  the  conduct  of 
life,  and  are  its  prime  motives  in  every  realm, 
individual,  marital,  communal,  political,  and  social. 
They  constitute  a  pervading  religion  of  life. 

The  English  under  Judgment. — It  is  not  possible 
to  give  details  of  the  events  of  the  Last  Judgment; 
these  may  be  read  in  Swedenborgs  work  on  that 
event.     It  proceeded  from  centres  to  circumferences; 
from  the  Protestant  nations  and  peoples  gathered  in 
the  spiritual  world,  to  the  Eoman  CathoHc;  because 
the  greater  light,  of  investigation  and  freedom,  was 
among  the  Protestants,  and  the  open  Bible;  and  the 
clearer  light  not  lived  up  to,  is  judged,  condemned, 
and  superseded,  before  those  who  are  in  possession  of 
no  Bible  and  of  only  obscure  and  second-hand  light, 
are  judged.     This  is  historically  obvious  when  we 
know  of  it.     Now,  what  is  pertinent,  and  a  grave 
fact  for  the  nation,  is,  that  the  English,  in  their 
religious   communions,  were   the   first  people  that 
were  judged ;  because,  as  Swedenborg  says,  ^'  The 
English   are   in   the  centre  of  all   nations   in   the 
spiritual  world; "  and  they  are  in  the  centre  because 
of  the  spiritual  hberty  which  in  their  minds  they 


276  THE  LAST  JUDGMENT  IN  1757. 

possess;  to  put  the  matter  in  an  English  way,  be- 
cause they  have  enjoyed,  and  do  enjoy,  civil  and  re- 
ligious   liberty.      The   southern   nations,   and    the 
"Roman  Catholic  States,  which  do  not  appropriate 
such    freedom,    had    long    been    displaced    in    the 
spiritual  world,  and  their  judgment  was  indicated 
and  prepared ;   and  correspondingly,  the  battle  of 
freedom  had  been  fought  successfully  against  them 
in  this  lower  world.     But  political  freedom  and  an 
open  Bible  cannot  save  a  church,  or  do  more  than  re- 
form it  politically  for  a  time,  unless  the  faculties  are 
open  to  heaven,  and  the  regeneration  of  life  comes 
thence.    One  has  only  to  look  at  the  middle  of  the  last 
century  to  see  how  dead  and  dry  the  world  was  then. 
Good  Dr.  Johnson,  and  Goldsmith,  and  Garrick  were 
its  ideals ;  often  sitting  within  a  mile  of  Sweden- 
borg  as  he  received  and  wrote  his  pages.     It  was 
not'^inappropriate  that  his  call  was  in  London,  that 
his  main  life  was  passed  in  London,  and  that  his 
works  were  chiefly  written  there.     He  foresaw  that 
the  English  mind  allowed  his  right  to  speak,  and 
that  however  strange  the  message,  that  mind  in  the 
long  run  would  give  it  the  welcome  that  belongs  to 
strangers.     The  Lord  in  a  luminous  appearance  at  a 
house  in  the  east  end  of  London,  where  the  Lord's 
light  is  so  greatly  needed  still,  cannot  rightfully 
astonish  those  who  remember  Jehovah  in  the  burn- 
ing   bush    before    Moses    in    Midian.      Nor   is   it 
inappropriate,    that    while    Swedenborgs    natural 
person  was  in  Clerkenwell,  his  internal  man  should 
be  taken  up  from  the  outward  London,  to  witness 
the  Last  Judgment  in  the  spiritual  world  upon  the 
gathered  English  race  from  their  first  to  their  last 
centuries;    and  the  formation  of  the  new  English 
heavens,  and  the  new  English  hells  opposed  to  tlicni. 


CONTEMPORAR  V  HIS  TOR  V. 


277 


LXXI. 


CONTEMPORARY    HISTORY. 

A  volume  might  be  written  of  historical  justifica- 
tions, to  show  that,  since  the  middle  of  the  last 
century,  some  great  inward  cause  has  reigned,  and 
produced  the  diflference  in  the  quickness  of  the 
human  mind  ;  a  cause  by  the  perturbations  and  new 
conditions  of  which  some  vast  new  body  of  heaven 
must  be  inferred  as  exerting  its  weight  in  the 
human  system.  Intolerance  of  mental  slavery,  how 
it  has  risen  in  men!  How  states  and  churches  have 
rocked  and  ruined  under  its  volcanic  throes !  What 
revolutions  and  wars  have  devastated  settled 
societies  !  What  afflux  of  power  has  come  into  the 
intellectual  aspirations  and  conceptions,  and  into  the 
daily  work  of  mankind  !  What  industries  and  arts 
unknown  to  the  past,  span  the  planet  in  their  fingers! 
Wliat  rapidity  in  history  !  What  questioning  of 
the  old,  and  expectation  of  the  new;  and  what 
happenings  of  the  unexpected  !  What  severe  pres- 
sure of  nations  and  men  to  their  duties  :  what 
hard  work,  and  what  good  food,  compared  to  the 
old  days  !  What  break  up  of  old  authority,  and 
division  of  hierarchs  among  themselves  !  What 
plain  internal  dissolution  of  churches  and  doctrines  I 
What  megatherian  indiflferentism  !  What  a  sanded 
floor  of  atheism,  as  the  intended  arena  where 
all  souls  and  all  saints  are  to  be  slauofhtered 
mentally  at  the  last  great  day  of  imperial  scientism! 
Nay,  but  also,  what  mighty  achievements  of  honest 
business-like  science !  Clearly  there  has  been  an 
influx  into  things,  and  on  the  human  side  it  is  not 
true,  or  feasible,  that  the  amount  of  force  in  the 
world  remains  the  same :  that  dulness  is  convertible 


278 


CONTEMPORAR  V  HISTOR  V. 


i 


into  intellect,  or  old  coaches  into  express  trains,  or 
the  decadent  manhood  of  races  into  renovated  youth. 
To  effect  the  change,  it  is  necessary  that  the  renova- 
tor and  redeemer  come  from  without.  Swedenborg 
has  given  a  sufficient  history  of  the  change;  no  other 
writer  has  attempted  it.  It  is  the  early  springtide 
of  the  New  Jerusalem  with  the  tree  of  life  replanted 
on  the  earth,  quickening  all  minds  towards  a  new 
and  universal  religion  wliich  will  have  common  life 
and  business  for  its  cathedral,  and  the  incarnate 
Lord,  visible  for  ever  through  the  opened  clouds  of 
the  Word,  for  its  one  high  priest. 

The  obvious  counter-statement  is,  that  the  move- 
ment now  is  calculable  from  the  past,  and  is  the 
natural  development  of  arts  and  sciences.  This 
also,  like  Swedenborgs  word,  lies  under  the  necessity 
of  being  an  assertion;  but  it  takes  its  position  for 
granted,  and  shows  no  adequate  force  :  indeed  it  only 
reiterates  the  fact,  and  gives  its  own  assurance  as 
an  explanation.  Swedenborg  supplies  a  complete 
theory  of  the  stream  of  events,  granting  which  theory, 
the  issues  follow  in  a  natural  course.  A  removal  of 
aged  and  pernicious  obstruction  from  all  minds;  a 
removal  of  hereditary  incompetence  deeper  than  the 
grave  ;  a  new  freedom  to  think,  to  will,  and  to  do  ; 
a  new  influence  from  the  right  hand  of  a  new  leader, 
the  lord  of  men;  a  new^  mind  in  the  world  in  which 
that  leader  is  made  visible,  so  that  man  is  His 
nation,  and  He  is  their  statesman  henceforth;  the 
families  of  heaven  and  the  families  of  the  earth 
coming  together  mutually  in  Him :  hope,  faith  and 
joy  re-born :  reason  illuminated,  and  admitted  into 
revelation,  and  reason  itself  revealed;  science  bap- 
tized with  fire  from  new  heavens  ;  love  assured  of 
all,  and  human  kindness  to  triumph  because  it  is 
the  Lord   moving ;    the  sermon  on  the  mount  set 


CONTEMPORAR  V  HISTOR  K 


279 


in  the  waiting-place  till  gradually  and  stealthily  it 
becomes  the  heart  in  the  law  of  the  land,  and  governs 
public  and  private  administration :  since  these  things 
have  happened  within,  there  is  an  end  of  the  case, 
and  a  world  renovated  and  upspringing  is  but  the 
natural  call  of  mankind  into  blossom  and  fruit  by 
the  unclouded  sun  of  the  New  Jerusalem. 

All  this  being  true,  it  would  not  be  improbable 
that  Swedenborg,  the  commissioned  messenger  of  it, 
should  be  also  despised  and  rejected  of  men,  and 
nothing  solid  be  known  about  him.  Tacitus,  with 
his  wonderful  perception  of  national  character,  saw 
no  importance  in  the  early  Christians,  and  did  not 
forecast  their  drama.  The  reception  of  a  message  of 
reproof  and  judgment  by  an  unwilling  audience,  is  in 
the  inverse  ratio  of  its  importance,  and  the  sound  of 
it  is  drowned  at  first  in  audible  disapprobation. 

It  is  then  certain  that  Swedenborg  has  opened 
rational  causes  for  the  spring  in  advance  which 
society  on  earth  has  made  since  the  middle  of  the 
last  century;  that  he  has  exhibited  ''a  pattern  seen 
on  the  mount,"  according  to  the  principles  of  which, 
events  have  flowed  in  foretold,  expected,  confirmatory 
sequence;  and  which  prophecies  of  a  world  of 
changes  yet  to  come,  all  proceeding  from  that  voice 
in  the  New  Jerusalem,  ''  Behold  I  make  all  thino-s 
new:"  and  also  that  materialism  and  atheism  have 
stated,  and  can  state,  no  causes  for  the  novel  events; 
that  they  hold  no  germs  from  which  development 
can  issue;  but  have  complacently  taken  their  own 
selfhoods  for  granted  as  the  factors  of  the  most 
wonderful  and  unending  revolution  in  modern  history. 
Copernicus  smiles  at  these  Ptolemies  of  their  own 
egotism  as  a  centre. 

Another  consideration  grows  out  of  these  spiritual 


^H 


28o 


CONTEMPORAR  V  HISTOR  V. 


f 


I 


events,  viz.,  out  of  the  Last  Judgment,  and  the 
planting  of  a  New  Church  upon  earth:  they  are 
remarkable  in  what  they  do  not  do.  AVhile  the 
whole  earth  is  moving  under  them  with  the  pressure 
upon  it  of  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  to  be 
realized  in  practice,  and  in  theory,  in  truth  and  in 
righteousness,  some  things  have  no  power  of  going 
on,  but  drop  cadaverously  from  the  ranks,  for  they 
are  wounded  unto  death.  The  existing  churches 
with  the  old  theology  in  them  make  no  advance  with 
the  rest  of  things:  they  are  propped  by  charity  by 
the  roadside  on  the  senile  bench  of  '^  quod  semper, 
quod  iihique,  quod  ah  omnihus,'  instead  of  sitting  in 
the  divine  chariot,  "  Behold  I  make  all  things  new." 
Some  may  think  that  this  means  that  they  are  be- 
hind the  age;  but  it  imports  far  more,  that  tliey  are 
left  out  of  the  divine  influx.  They  themselves  pro- 
claim the  removal  of  their  candlestick  in  their  jealous 
incapacity  for  progression.  And  it  may  be  stated 
broadly,  that  whatever  subject,  or  science,  or  theo- 
logy, is  not  now  manifestly  advancing,  is  left  out  of 
the  new  order  of  things,  and  subject  to  the  nature  of 
decay.  Materialism  and  atheism  are  visibly  stuccoed 
on  the  same  board  of  stagnation  with  the  old  theo- 
logical mythologies  and  ritualisms;  there  is  no  new 
element  in  them  since  the  days  of  Lucretius;  they 
pose  nothing  with  the  same  gravity  though  with  more 
stucco  than  he  did,  and  nothing  does  not  materially 
but  only  verbally  alter  from  age  to  age.  We  have 
then  a  complete  testimony  to  the  stoppage  of 
churches  and  anti-churches  amidst  the  general  march 
of  the  world  ;  in  other  words,  to  Swedenborg  s 
position,  that  the  first  Christian  Church  is  a  dead 
branch,  and  in  all  its  departments  has  come  to  an 
end. '   If  more  could  be  added  to  the  evidence,  it  is 


ANOTHER  SIGN,  281 

the  outward  attempt  of  the  old  churches  to  dress  like 
the  young  church;  the  resort  of  ecclesiasticism  to  the 
tailor  for  the  renewal  of  youth;  and  that  babbling  of 
the  past  which  belongs  to  the  end  of  a  life;  and 
which  is  characteristically  exhibited  by  a  large 
section  of  the  mythological  churches  at  the  present 
time. 


LXXII. 


ANOTHER    SIGN. 


A  strict  consequence  of  the  recovered  freedom  of 
mankind  arising  out  of  the  last  judgment,  and  the 
new  force  of  divine  truth  striking  upon  all  intellects, 
is  found,  as  we  have  said  before,  in  the  audacious 
infidelity  of  the  age;  in  short,  in  the  increment  of  the 
powers  and  qualities  of  that  disbelief  which  springs 
from  the  heart.     For  what  the  last  judgment  did  for 
this  world  by  reinstating  *^  freedom  of  thinking  and 
willing,"  in  other  words,  civil  and  religious  liberty  in 
the  mind  itself,  was  to  increase  human  power  in 
both  directions;  so  that  the  influence  of  heaven  could 
be  potent  and  paramount  for  those  who  will;  and 
the  influence  of  hell  could,  with  no  violation  of  free- 
dom in  self-possessed  men,  exert  its  subtlest  forces 
in  corroboration  of  their  intellectual  and  voluntary 
lives.      This  is  what  we  see  now;  a  battlefield  of 
freedom,  and  on  it  an  awakening  of  good  and  evil 
from  a  long  trance  to  fight  again  on  the  earth  and  in 
the  air,  with  enginery  unknown  to  past  ages;  that  is 
to  say,   with  perceptions  of  their   own   ends,   and 
po^yers  to  carry  them  forth,  arising  from  the  emanci- 
pation of  thought,  and  from  its  receiving  the  inspira- 


282 


ANOTHER  SIGN. 


ANOTHER  SIGN. 


283 


4 

I 

i 


• 


tion  of  faith  in  the  Lord  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
inflammation  of  the  glory  of  the  selfhood  on  the 
other.     The  wide  indifferentism  too  is  a  symptom  of 
infernal  emancipation  from  good.     All  this  is  scien- 
tifically true  of  every  man  s  consciousness.     Let  him 
be  resolutely  striving  for  good  of  life,    and   then 
increased  freedom  of  faculty,  conversing  also  from 
without  with  new  education  and  instruction  in  truth, 
enables  him  to  w^alk  with  new  power  towards  re- 
generation, though  falsities  contradicting  the  truths 
may  and  will  arise  in  him  and  attempt  to  harass  his 
feet.     On  the  other  hand,   if  self  be  his  adopted 
centre,  the  pressure  of  the  same  truth  will  produce 
inward  vigour  of  denial,  and  subtile  intellectual  ways 
of  asserting  it,  and  these  will  develop  with  great  and 
systematic  skill  a  new  mind  round   the  imperilled 
Ecjo.     These  processes  are  extant  in  all  individuals 
more  or  less ;  and  they  are  also  visible  in  the  state  of 
the  age.     In  short,  vast  faculties  of  good  and  evil 
now  possess  the  world,  and  replenish  it  and  multiply 
in  it;  on  the  one  hand  they  are  the  manifestation  of 
the  New  Jerusalem;    on  the  other,  they  are  the 
counter  manifestation  of  the  new  hells;    and   the 
new  freedom  of  the  race  is  the  divine  balance  be- 
tween these  two  empires. 

It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  knowledge 
of  these  great  events  in  the  spiritual  world  is  not 
the  condition  of  the  propagation  of  their  effects. 
Nothing  of  Swedenborg's  revelation  of  them  is 
known  to  the  general  world,  and  yet  they  are  organic 
facts  within  the  body  of  history  and  private  life, 
which  exert  incalculable  power  by  their  own  gravity 
and  force.  Few  know  that  the  heavens  have  been 
newly  arranged  by  divine  order,  and  opened  down- 
wards upon  the  earth;  but  all  receive  the  new  light, 


and  think  and  will  from  it  with  greater  capacity; 
few  know  that  the  spiritual  bosom  of  the  Word  has 
been  opened,  but  yet  it  gives  the  milk  of  the  light  of 
life  to  the  good  and  true  of  all  churches.  The  funda- 
mental fact  here  is  not  a  propaganda  of  doctrines 
from  a  centre  of  authority,   but  the  oncoming  of  a 
new^  day  to  the  arctic  mind  of  the  past,  and  a  new 
man  full  of  kingdoms  appearing  under  its  meridian. 
There  were  no  inhabitants  there  before,  but  snow^ 
men  and  snow  women.     There  is  a  population  now, 
the  children,  all  of  them,  of  the  altered  relations  of 
the  spiritual  sun;    but  their  consciousness  of  whence 
their  estate  springs  is  nil;  nor  can  they  account  for 
themselves,   excepting  as  self-developed,  upon  any 
other  scientific  principles,  than  that  a  new  dispensa- 
tion from  the  Lord  has  rio^hted  the  balance  of  things, 
and  cloven  down  to  them  with  that  liofht  and  love 
which  are  the  hfe  of  all  minds.     But  the  divine 
principles  which  are  tlie  agents  subsist  whether  with 
or  without  the  concurrence  of   human  knowledsre: 
for  they  are  not  dogmas  or  scientifics,  or  even  per- 
ceptions, but  determinate  divine  epochs,  organic  like 
the  history  of  the  human  race  correlated  to  that  of 
the  planet,  only  more  organic,  because  the  life  of  tlie 
history  of  the  spiritual  world  is  brought  into  the 
correlation,  and  is  the  principle  of  power. 

Note,  however,  but  as  belonging  to  another  subject, 
that  those  who  receive  these  things  willingly  as 
from  heaven,  receive  them  in  themselves,  and  the 
selfhood  is  re-created  by  them;  those  w  ho  do  not  so 
credit  them,  receive  the  new  light  and  its  powers  on 
themselves,  and  attribute  them  to  scientia  ex  se, 
science  from  the  self,  and  to  intelUgentia  ex  se, 
intelligence  from  the  self  The  one  set  receive  them 
internally,  and  they  are  open  all  the  w^ay  to  the 


284 


THE   WORD. 


Lord;  the  other  externally,  and  self  opens  into  them, 
and  with  no  organic  rights  or  similitudes  claims 
them.  The  scientifics  that  run  out  of  the  latter 
condition  are  falsities  from  their  first  principles. 


LXXIII. 


I 


THE    WORD. 

The  source  of  the  new  light  is  the  Word,  in  the 
divine  truths  of  which  the  Lord  is  present  to  the 
w^orld.     It  will  be  kindly  remembered  by  the  reader 
that  there  is  no  attempt  in  these  pages  to  give  a 
detailed  statement  of  the  doctrines  of  Swedenborg, 
but   rather  to  show  that    there    is    a    correlation 
between  them  and  all  that  is  real  and  accepted  in 
other   fields,   and  especially  that  tliey  fiice  science 
with  new  facts  for  exploration.       This  is  the  case 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  Word.     Every  true  know- 
ledge  must   have  something   to   go   upon    besides 
internal  conditions  and  conjectures.     It  must  have  a 
field,    an  ultimate  world,  or  it  will  be  dependent 
upon    the   thinkers    imagination.       Now     for    the 
highest  plane  of  the  intellect,  the  religious  mind,  the 
Word  is  the  world  that  is  to  be  studied  or  known. 
And    besides   the    Word   there   is    no  other  field. 
Not  accepting  it,  the  religious  consciousness  of  the 
theist  is  forced  to  think  out  and  conjecture    God 
according  to  his  own  state  and  character,   and  to 
cultivate  an  anthropomorphism  of  the  most  privately 
personal  kind  ;  besides  which,  knowledge  is  impos- 
sible,  because  there  are  no  facts  in  which  it  can 
inhere.      A  keen    intellect  with  no   senses   placed 
down  in  the  natural  universe  and  endeavouring  to 


THE  WORD, 


285 


comprehend    it    by  cogitations,    and   love    it  with 
affections,  is  the  analogue  of  a  theism  which  ignores 
revelation,  and  would  fain  have  knowledge  of  God. 
The  Word  in  its  letter  is  the  missing  universe  of 
His  all-real  truths.     Here  there  is  something  sub- 
stantial to  be  studied,  and  scientifics  can  begin  to  be 
formed  ;   and  man,  ''  the  minister  and  interpreter  of 
nature,"  can  take  his  place  also,  since  Swedenboro* 
as  the  minister  and  interpreter  of  the  Word.     In  its 
lines,  it  is  infinitely  commensurate  with  our  finite 
faculties,  and  can  fill  them  with  its  knowledge.     As 
against   the  poor  estate   of  the  theist,    reverently 
believing  that  there  is  a  God,  and  hoping  and  aspir- 
ing to  think  out  something  of  Him  from  nature  and 
the  mind,  observe  the  scientific  privilege  of  the  New 
Church    accepting    the   Divine    Humanity   of  the 
Lord,  the  Word  made  flesh,  and  the  divinity  of  the 
Word   enshrined   in   the   pages   of  the  Bible.     If 
theology  is   all  this,  and  if  this  can  be  correlated 
with  the  operations  of  the  rational  mind,  a  field  of 
sciences,  knowledges,  and  truths,  vaster  than  those  of 
nature,  and  agreeing  with  them,  is  now  for  the  first 
time  revealed  to  the  conscious  gaze  of  the  human 
mind. 

Theism. — The  aspiration  of  theism  to  a  creed  of 
God,  is  impossible  to  adjoin  to  a  scientific  hypo- 
thesis of  the  world;  for  that  such  a  fabric  as  the 
visible  formal  universe  should  be  created  by  a  benio-n 
God,  which  the  supposition  is,  and  that  a  conscious 
mind,  male  and  female,  with  large  religious  faculties, 
should  be,  so  far  as  we  have  experience,  the  crown 
of  it,  and  that  He,  the  All-possible,  should  have 
left  Himself  unmanifested,  a  prey  to  imagination  and 
conjecture,  when  yet  shape  and  form  for  every  other 
thing   are  his  representative  creatures,   his   easiest 


^,1 


286 


THE  WORD. 


THE  WORD, 


28 


I 


manifestoes,  is  an  anomaly  to  the  human  heart  and 
intellect.     It  declares  that  the  rest  of  things  can  be 
definitely   known,   but   that    the    exact    God    and 
fashioner  is   a  guess;  that  He  who   has  a   divine 
heart  cannot  show  a  divine  face.     On  these  terms 
also    he    must    remain  for    ever   inscrutable.      The 
closest   thinkers    of    the    atheistical    school    arrive 
at    the    conclusion,    that    the    unknown    and    un- 
knowable   blocks    the    way    at    the    far    end    of 
knowledge;   but  they   solve  the  problem  to  their 
own    content   by  denying  an   apprehensible    God; 
while  the  theist  craves  a  God,  and  necessarily  be- 
lieves that  faculty  is  given  whereby  in  some  way 
to  reach  one ;  and  yet  no  manifest  God  is  in  view. 
The  position  is  the  more  remarkable  because  the 
hio-her,   nobler,   tenderer,    and   more    religious   the 
theism  becomes,  the  more  likely  it  is  that  theism 
itself  is  untrue,  because  it  is  less  likely  that  such  a 
deity  as  then  touches  the  heart,  should  not  reveal 
Himself  plainly,  yea  most  plainly,  to  His  suffering 
and  sorely  needing  creatures.     The  same  remarks 
apply   secondarily  to  the  life  after  death  and  the 
spiritual  world.     The  atheist  gets  rid  of  the  subject, 
at  the  peril  of  his  faculties,  for  ignoring  is  a  dan- 
gerous desert  to  a  being  who  worships  experience 
and  thought.    But  the  believer  in  an  immortal  state, 
in  proportion  as  he  believes  it  substantially,  is  more 
and  more  at  fault  if  he  refuses  to  extend  his  belief  to 
an  attested  manifestation  of  the  spiritual  world  to 
the  men  and  women  in  the  natural  world;  and  if  he 
does  not  affirmatively  look  far  and  wide  to  see  that 
manifestation  where  it  may  be  found.     This  is  a  fair 
scientific   process.      If  there   be   a   God,  the  first 
likely  hypothesis  is,  that  He  shows  Himself  exactly 
to  instruct  mankind;  search  then  for  Him  where 


perhaps  He  may  be  found,  in  revelation.  If  revela- 
tion contains  Him,  revelation  is  the  continent  of 
the  theory  and  truth  of  His  presence  in  the  world. 
So  if  there  be  a  spiritual  world,  seek  it,  not  in  fancy, 
or  imagination,  or  thought,  or  in  any  affection,  or 
beside  any  grave,  but  in  its  actual  revelation.  Now 
these  actual  revelations,  besides  the  general  voice  of 
history,  are  only  two,  viz.,  the  Bible  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  writings  of  Swedenborg  on  the  other. 
If  any  man  can  bring  other  universes  of  divine  truth 
into  the  arena,  let  him  do  so;  or  let  him  honestly 
study  and  make  induction  of  these. 

In  claiming  for  the  Word  the  reality  that  belongs 
to  the  realm  of  sciences,  we  necessarily  resort  to 
the  spiritual  sense,  which  is  co-extensive  with  the 
letter,  and  has  inspired  it  into  existence,  and  which 
cannot  be  fairly  denied  by  any  but  those  explorers 
who  have  studied  the  whole  case  in  Swedenborg. 
It  is  not  so  patent  a  realm  at  first  that  the  human 
faculties  can  deal  triflingly  with  it.     The  spiritual 
sense  is  the  theory  of  the  matter.     It  is  incumbent 
upon  the  scientist  to  examine  whether  the  tlieory  . 
fits.     He  has  never  believed  in  the  possibility  of 
such  a  sense.    He  ought  therefore  honestly  to  guard 
against  prejudice   as  an  end  of  inquiry.     He  must 
admit  the   possibility   provisionally,    or   he  cannot 
proceed.     He   must,   as  Swedenborg  says,  be,    for 
the  trial,  in  the  duhitative  affirmative,  not  in  the 
diibitative  negative  state.     This  is   common  to  all 
investigations   in  which  a  hypothesis  is  undergoino- 
trial;  or  a  theory,  proof;  or  a  truth,  establishment. 


I 

t 


288  ABSTRACTIONS  PUT  ASIDE. 


LXXIV. 

ABSTRACTIONS    PUT   ASIDE. 

Further,  the  theory  of  an  internal  sense  living 
within  the  Word  as  the  spirit  within  the  body,  is 
unlike  any  other  theory  in  this  respect;  that  it  is 
not  an  abstract  principle,  such  as  gravitation,  and 
the  like;  but  involves  the  correlation  of  two  organic 
universes.     The  internal  sense  of  the  Word  is  the 
internal  Word,  just  as  the  spiritual  man  of  the  other 
life  is  the  real  man,  with  all  his  ''  body,  parts,  and 
passions."     In  glory  and  in  power,  it  is  unlike  the 
natural  sense,  as  the  angel  of  the  man  is  unlike  the 
man.     And  yet  the  correlation  and  correspondence 
are  perfect;  so  perfect,  that  the  spiritual  sense,  by 
revelation,   can   be   opened   down  into   the  higher 
natural  faculties,  and  be  rationally  and  scientifically 
received   by  them.     Being  consummately  organic, 
the  divine  man  in  complete  speech  adequate  to  every 
diverse  ear  in  heaven   and   upon   earth,   it   opens 
theory  downwards  into  nature,  and  principles  are  no 
longer  sufficient,  but  corresponding  body  and  sub- 
stance reveal  themselves  within  the  letter  and  the 
mortal  frame.     The  truth  in  which  the  hypothesis 
first,  and  then  the  theory  closes,  is  the  divine  man 
uttering  the  Word.     So  again  with  regard  to  the 
spiritual  world;  it  is  not  a  set  of  internal  principles 
and  cogitations,  not  a  supreme  act  and  fact  of  con- 
sciousness, but  a  spiritual  universe  and  cosmos  cor- 
responding to  the  universe  of  nature.     And  so  again, 
with  the  spirit  after  death.     That  spirit  is  not  a 
thouc^ht  or  a  virtue,  or  an  affection  disembodied, 
but  a  man,  who  corresponded  to  and  with  the  mor- 


ABSTRACTIONS  PUT  ASIDE, 


289 


tal  man  who  was  here  before  death.     Thus  in  these 
three  spheres  now  revealed,  the  principles  of  truth 
are  themselves  bodies,  forms,  substances,  and  hence 
pressures,   and  the  wealth  of  quantity  comes  into 
the  coffers  of  the  intellectual  mind.     The  Lord  will 
not  have   us   so   poor  that  great  faculties  shall  be 
spent  upon  abstract  hopes,  but  He  reveals  Himself 
organically  as  the  one  only  Man;  He  speaks  the 
organic  word  through  the  heavens  down  into  the 
letter  for  the  churches;  he  opens  the  great  abstrac- 
tion, death,  and  the  bodily  persons  of  all  who  have 
gone  are  seen  in  character  and  in  work;   and  with 
the  vision  extended,  the  spiritual  world  comes  down 
close    upon    sun    and   system   with   its   own   suns 
and  systems,  and  gives  itself  forth,  entire,  organic 
and   bodily,   as   the   principle   of  nature,   and   the 
philosophy  of  mundane  knowledge.     Science  is  thus 
elevated  from  the  attainment  of  principles  and  rules 
only,  to  the  knowledge  of  the  men  of  things.     Heat 
above,  which  is  love,  the  hottest  of  heat,  fills  heat 
below,  which  is  natural  fire;  light  above,  which  is 
wisdom,  fills  natural  light,  to  which  it  corresponds; 
attraction    above,    which    is    sympathy    and    cor- 
respondence of  aflfection,  enters  attraction  of  bodies 
below;  and  the  correlation  of  the  known  qualities  of 
the  two  terms,  furnishes  a  more  powerful  organon  of 
exploration  than  has  yet  existed   in  the  sciences. 
Also,  freedom   is  conserved,  and   extended.     For, 
given  the  upper  term,  the  divine  and  the  spiritual, 
and  the  poor  audacity  of  the  mind  which  violates 
science  when  it  chatters  atheism,  is  put  aside  as 
nothing;    science  can  be   merely  natural   with   no 
temptation  to  be  godless;  and  greater  application  of 
legitimate  powers  can  be  maintained;  the  single  eye 
comes   into   investigation;    and   we    recognize    the 

T 


f 


290  ABSTRA  CTIONS  PUT  ASIDE, 

function  of  that  solid  pressure  of  truth  which  by 
demolishing  the  vacuum  above  rebellious  falsity 
makes  men  greatly  free.  What  a  world  of  false 
ways  of  knowledge  are  eliminated  here.  The  death 
of  conceit  alone  which  it  involves  opens  new  eyes 
for  the  natural  mind,  nay,  new  achromatic  lenses  for 
its  skill  in  the  natural  sciences. 

For,  observe,  no  man  is  bound  to  study  the 
spiritual  side  of  the  equation  excepting  when  he 
pleases.  He  may  select  natural  truth  alone  as  an 
organon,  and  prefer  to  gain  that  on  its  own  ground. 
But  when  he  admits  the  other  ground,  and  some- 
thing of  the  correspondency,  if  he  goes  beyond 
natural  fact,  it  will  not  be  into  materialism,  but  into 
reality.  This  amounts  to  a  true  resting-place,  a  bed, 
for  the  mind;  and  will  prevent  the  weaker  order  of 
explorers  from  the  alarm  of  finding  that  they  are 
nowhere  at  the  end  of  an  honest  day  s  work. 

It  is  safe  to  predict  from  these  grounds  that  a 
revolution  is  preparing  for  the  thought  and  imagina- 
tion that  is  at  present  vested  in  scientific  pursuits; 
that  whenever  the  mind  comes  within  hail  of  ab- 
stract principles,  it  will  demand  the  human  world  to 
which  they  belong,  and  carry  them  into  its  illustra- 
tion.   This  will  ensoul  knowledge,  and  embody  soul; 
that  is  to  say,  by  discerning  the  soul,  and  recogniz- 
ing the  body  of  it.      Swedenborg  has  given  fine 
examples  of  this  in  many  fields.     For  instance,  as 
was  said  before,  the  lungs  correspond  to  the  under- 
standing;  they  are  to  the  body  what  the  under- 
standing is  to  the  mind.     The  heart  and  arteries 
correspond  to  the  will  and  its  afiections;  it  is  the 
pulsing  will  of  the  involuntary  organic  kingdom. 
Study   each  term   separately,   elicit   anatomy   and 
physiology;  then  take  account  of  human  nature,  life 


ABSTRA  CTIONS  PUT  ASIDE,  291 

and  experience  in  outward  and  inward  observation; 
and  afterwards  parallel  the  function  of  understand- 
ing with   the   function  of  lungs;   the  metaphysics 
with  the  physics;  and  the  function  of  will  with  the 
function  of  the  heart;  and  you  will  observe  a  strict 
correlation  between  the   two   planes  of  induction. 
Again,  as  the  heart  and  the  lungs  are  conjoined  in 
an  organic  marriage,  the  truths  which  pertain  to  the 
conjunction   of    the   will   and    understanding,   and 
which  are  perceived  in  experience,  meet  the  first 
case,  and  form  with  it  planes  of  induction.    A  jewel 
here  is,  that  one  of  the  terms  is  self-conscious,  and 
when  enlightened  can  be  self-evident;  and  thus  this 
super-position  of  sciences  leads  not  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown,  but  from  the  visible  known  to  the 
mental   known;    from   natural   light,   to   revealing 
light,  to  spiritual  light.     It  was  by  these  processes 
that  Swedenborg  in  the  example  now  given,  was 
capacitated  to  understand  the  natural  and  mental 
function  of  the  heart  and  lungs  in  a  sense  which  no 
physiologist  had  ventured  to  open;  and  also  to  see 
into  human  nature,  and  the  important  reciprocal  action 
of  the  will  and  understanding,  not  only  by  deep 
inward  perception,  but  by  having  his   perceptions 
projected  upon  the  representative  plane  of  the  organic 
forms  which  are  the  fleshly  tables  on  which  he  studied. 
Thus  he  won  not  alone  principles  but  the  speaking 
bodily  souls  of  things.     He  won  plane  after  plane 
of  final  causes;  but  these  more  organic  than  their 
efiects.     He  saw  that  the  will,  the  end  of  the  heart, 
is  itself  a  spiritual  heart,  given  into  the  inner  body 
of  the  mind;  and  with  its  own  blood  in  it,  the  blood 
of  organic  truth,  which  makes  all  the  organs  of  the 
spiritual   man.      And  so,  in  the  coming  sciences, 
materialism  and  bare  metaphysic  will  be  nothing. 


i>  \ 


•r 


1 
I 


I 


292  r^^  AFFECTIONS. 

and  viviperception  will  be  all  in  all,  and  will  consist 
in  a  constant  appearing  of  life  over  the  forms  of 
things;  the  life  abiding  in  the  mentally  illuminated 
form  of  the  forms;  in  personality  after  personality, 
in  men  and  women,  the  deeper  you  go.  It  was  a 
divine  corollary  of  this  new  opening,  of  greater 
reality  than  the  opening  itself,  that  Swedenborg 
passed  through  the  mental,  which  is  directed  down- 
wards here,  to  the  spiritual  world;  and  saw  life  and 
death  over  again  in  the  greater  universes,  where  the 
sun  is  alive,  and  the  moon  is  alive,  and  the  earth  is 
alive,  because  they  are  the  instantaneous  creations 
and  correspondences  of  the  divine  love  and  wisdom 
and  use,  fashioning  them  through  and  to  and  for  the 
states  of  the  immeasurable  census  of  the  populations 
of  the  spiritual  world. 


LXXV. 

THE   AFFECTIONS. 

Throughout  this  work,  and  in  all  expositions  of 
the  statements  of  Swedenborg,  the  word  affections 
is  of  frequent  occurrence;  and  it  has  been  before 
explained  that  it  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the 
modern  metaphysical  word  ''  emotions,"  which  signi- 
fies a  certain  affluence  and  overflow  of  feeling  upon 
a  given  point;  but  not  organic  form,  substance,  and 
stasis,  which  aff*ection  implies.  To  put  a  parallel, 
affection  in  one  place  corresponds  to  the  capillary 
arteries  of  the  cheeks;  emotion,  to  the  momentaneous 
state  of  blushing  in  those  vessels.  The  affections 
are  the  internal  arteries  of  which  the  ruling  love  is 
the  heart:  they  are  determinations  not   emotions; 


TIfF  AFFECTIONS,  293 

fibrous  intentions  always  there  and  always  beating, 
not  occasional  affluences.     Any  point  of  any  one  of 
them  can  in  a  moment  be  laid  hold  of  by  the  love, 
and  become  a  will.    Emotions  are  almost  the  opposite 
of  this  generally.     For  example,  the  love  of  family 
is  a  powerful  heart  in  the  human  mind;  from  it  go 
forth  affections,  arteries,  to  the  various  members  of 
the  family,  near  and  remote.     The  conjugal  family 
love  is  correlated  in  the  two  sides  of  the  heart.     The 
arteries  given  off  first  are  the  love  of  the  immediate 
children;  steady,  fibrous,  ever-beating  parental  affec- 
tions.     The  more  remote  affections  or  organic  ar- 
teries of  this  ruling  love,  run  to  the  other  kindred. 
The  family  tree  of  the  affection  in  the  intention  of 
the  mind's  nature  and  creation  is  complete,  whether 
brought  into  function  in  this  world,  or  not.     Any 
member  of  it  may  be  withered,  and  the  love  that 
runs  to  it  be  weak,  poor,  and  incomplete:  but  the 
affectional  anatomy  remains  the  same.     A  man  may 
also  consciously  regulate  and  enrich  the  blood  of  his 
affections  in  any  direction  by  noble  processes  of  will; 
for  this  heart  and  its  arteries  are  given  over  to  his 
spiritual  care.      He  may  and  does  build  his  own 
spiritual  anatomy,  and  create  his  spiritual  sympa- 
thetic nerves,  according  to  his  deliberate  behaviour 
here  on  earth.     The  same  remarks  apply  to  all  the 
other  ruling  loves  in  a  man;  they  run  side  by  side 
through  the  mind;  have  each  their  own  currents, 
and   are  convoluted  into  only  one  heart   and   one 
arterial  system,  which  is  the  ruling  love  which  is  the 
life,  and  its  derivations  to  all  the  objects  of  life, 
which  are  the  organs  of  the  man.     Thus  the  love  of 
country  is  a  powerful  heart,  and  its  vessels,  which 
are  patriotic  affections,  run  to  every  great  cause  in 
which  a  part  is  to  be  played,  and  pulsate  through 


I 


11 


294         DIVINE  ENTRANCES  INTO  SCIENCE. 

the  good  of  the  motherland  with  constant  streams 
and1)eatings  of  heart.     The  family  stream  is  in  the 
patriotic  stream,  and  vice  versd;  and  each  sustams 
the  other  with  life.     These  remarks  upon  a  great 
subject,  which  opens  like  a  sea  of  correspondences 
and  considerations  before  the  view,  are  introduced 
here  parenthetically,  in  order  that  the  reader  may 
know  that  the  writings  of  the  'New  Church  do  not 
mistake  evanescent  feelings  for  important  factors  m 
the  life  of  mankind;  and  that  the  position  that  love 
is  the  life  of  man  is  consubstantial  with  the  human 
heart  and  its  chambered  organization;  and  that  the 
further  statement  that  the  affections  are  derivations 
of  the  love,  touches  upon  an  exact  anatomy  and 
physiology  of  the  inner  man,  and  correlates  with  all 
the  acts  of  will  wherein  a  man  does  nobly,  or  ignobly, 
in  his  relations  of  love,  or  hatred,  with  his  fellow- 
men.     The  bare  statement  begins  to  introduce  the 
created  order  of  the  body,  and  of  the  soul,  into  the 
mind  which  is  the  meeting-place  of  both.     Future 
time  will  study  such  vast  things;  the  beginning  only, 
from  Swedenborg,  is  now  and  here. 


LXXVI. 

DIVINE    ENTRANCES   INTO   SCIENCE. 

How  great  the  change  of  the  death  and  resurrec- 
tion of  the  sciences  will  be,  may  be  seen  from  a 
slight  instance  already  extant.  Consider  physics 
before  the  law  of  attraction  was,  we  need  not  say 
established  by  Newton,  but  before  it  was  dreamed 
of.  The  coherence  of  the  world  was  sensible  enough 
though  hardly  formulated;  but  its  unity  and  immen- 


DIVINE  ENTRANCES  INTO  SCIENCE.         295 

sity  were  not  in  sight.     Attraction  entered  it,  and 
the  orbs  were  spaced  in  their  order.     The  sky  as  one 
being  stood  up  on  its  true  feet  before  the  aggrandized 
imagination,  and  the  telescopic  arts  that  were  need- 
ful to  follow  the  head  of  nature  as  she  was  lifted 
up,  were  developed  in  their  series.     And  all  this 
because  the  universe  became  recognized  as  the  body 
of  attraction.     Attraction  was  not  a  great  soul  for 
a  man  who  was  more  than  a  magnet  to  propose  for 
the  acceptance  of  things;  but  it  was  a  physical  soul 
where  there  was  none  before,  and  it  was  also  a  cor- 
respondence pliable  to  life  and  love,  and  it  slid  into 
science,  say  rather  it  was  breathed  from  above  into 
the  nostrils  of  science;  and  it  at  once  became  the 
heir  of  the  ordered  immensities  of  space,  holding  it 
by  thoughts  telling  of  living  immensity.      If  now 
this  one  unintelligent  principle  could  accomplish  these 
results,   what  will   be  the  eiffect   when  the  divine 
humanity  of  the  Lord,  the  Word,  and  the   open 
spiritual    world,    are   admitted,    not   as    rules    and 
formulas,  but  as  personal  final  causes,  into  the  cos- 
mology and  physiology  of  man  and  nature  ?     Nature 
which  coheres  by  attraction,  will  shine  with  self- 
evident  light,  and  glow  with  love,  as  the  convoys 
from  above  near  her,  and  take  station  as  souls  within 
her.      Her  doctrines  will  be  opened  for  heavenly 
admissions.     As  it  is  said  in  the  Psalms,  "  Lift  up 
your  heads,  ye  everlasting  doors,  that  the  King  of 
Glory  may  come  in.     The  Lord  of  Hosts,  He  is  the 
King  of  Glory."     If  the  wisdoms  of  the  inner  gate  of 
God  into  heaven  require  to  be  continually  lifted  up 
for  his  admission  into  the  soul,  how  great  the  liftino 
up  and  the  revolution  must  be  as  He  is  to  be  ad- 
mitted continually  day  after  day  into  these  mortal 
faculties  of  science,  and  to  pass  through  them  also 


n 


2  96        DIVINE  ENTRANCES  INTO  SCIENCE. 

as  the  Shekinah  of  His  illuminating  person.  No 
parallel  between  the  lowest  savage  and  the  highest 
scientist  as  the  world  considers  him,  can  give  illus- 
tration of  what  the  difference  will  be.  It  will  be  as 
between  a  true  life  reigning  in  the  scientific  faculties, 
and  mere  death  and  selfhood:  between  attraction 
which  holds  the  universe  together  as  a  stone;  and 
personal  righteousness  and  judgment  with  the  same 
universe  in  the  hollow  of  His  hand. 

Under  this  light,  the  creatures  will  be  re-named; 
spiritual   nomenclature  wdll  be  a  battery  of  light 
induced  over  and  into  science.     Adam,  that  is,  the 
Adamic  or  celestial  Church,  perceived  the  natures  of 
all  birds  and  beasts  as  words  most  heavenly,  spoken 
forth  as  divine  truths  by  Jehovah ;  those  which  were 
opposites  were  also  exact  organic  divine  truths  in 
their  foundations;   they  were  all   celestial   mental 
qualities  separately  organized  for  delight  and  pro- 
creation of  what  is  remotely  human  in  the  world. 
This  knowledge  is  coming  again  in  the  New  Church, 
but  in  intellectual  and  rational  forms,  adequate  to 
the  subdual  of  the  iron  and  brazen  age,  and  to  the 
consummation  of  the  men  of  the  sciences,  with  woe 
to  the  maltreaters  of  animal  life,  to  the  high  priests 
and  Sadducees  of  cruelty.     In  forms  also  adequate 
to  the  devastation  of  atheism  with  its  subsidiary 
theism,   and  of  materialism  with  its  underground 
mentalities.    There  can  and  will  be  a  natural  history 
of  animal  souls,  from  the  perception  of  analogies  first, 
and  then  correspondences,  whereby  the  forms  and 
habits  of  birds,  beasts  and  fishes  will  be  explicable 
from  the  knowledge  of  what  these  creatures  mean, 
and  therefore  are,  in  the  human  universe.    At  present 
they  are  named  and  classified  from  their  hair,  or  their 
feathers,  or  their  teeth,  at  any  rate,  from  outermost 


DIVINE  ENTRANCES  INTO  SCIENCE.        297 

differences ;  they  will  one  day  be  named  from  the 
distinct  affections  which  are  their  lives,  which  are 
their  loves  ;  and  from  their  correspondence  with  the 
same  affections  in  mankind  :  also  further,  in  planes 
of  nomenclature,  from  their  functional  forms  in  the 
spiritual  world,  natural,  spiritual,  and  celestial;  where 
they  appear  again  with  endless  variety  as  representa- 
tives of  spiritual  states.  The  animals  mentioned  in 
the  Word,  the  horses,  black,  pale,  and  red,  the  white 
horse,  the  horses  of  fire,  the  lion,  and  the  lamb,  each 
having  exact  being  and  meaning,  nay,  the  compound 
animals  of  vision,  which  are  no  longer  mystical, 
because  they  are  now  intelligible  in  Swedenborg,  will 
open  down  into  natural  history,  and  connect  it  with 
the  divine  life  in  the  New  Jerusalem. 

The  divine  truth  also  opens  down  into  optics.  For 
it  is  the  Lord  enlightening,  and  light  is  its  correspond- 
ence in  nature.  Like  the  lungs,  it  expands  nature  from 
darkness  into  apperception.  It  gives  ocular  under- 
standing its  ground  of  being.  It  is  the  first  though 
not  the  greatest  of  natural  forces.  It  is  twofold, 
natural  and  spiritual.  Natural  light  in  its  strength 
puts  out  spiritual  light;  the  sun  of  nature,  as 
Swedenborg  says,  is  seen  as  a  black  disc  opposite  to 
the  sun  of  heaven.  Yet  there  is  correlation  between 
the  two  considered  in  order;  the  one  illustrates  the 
other;  the  lower  is  the  plane  of  induction  towards 
the  higher;  and  the  higher  or  spiritual  is  the  plane  of 
deduction  towards  the  lower.  The  first  deduction 
may  be,  that  as  truth  is  the  moving  principle  of  the 
mind,  the  commanding  motive  for  going  on  to  better 
and  better  things,  the  luminous  inner  man  or  conscience 
continually  radiated  from  the  Lord,  so  the  light  of 
every  day  carries  the  motive  of  nature,  and  draws  on 
and  heralds  her  through  her  courses.    There  is  indeed 


298 


ANALOGY. 


no  light  without  heat,  no  truth  or  wisdom  without 
love  ;  but  a  condition  of  remoteness  comes,  in  which 
light  properly  takes  the  first  place,  the  heat  is  imper- 
ceptible, and  the  action  is  properly  named  from  the 
licrht.     This  is  a  pure  correspondence  of  what  the 
living  light,  seemingly  unheated  or  impartial,  does 
on  the  man ;  and  the  motive  force  of  light  in  physics 
correlates  with  this  property  of  the  light  of  the  mind, 
and  with  the  light  of  righteousness  which  is  from  the 
spiritual  sun.     Here  it  may  be  noted  that  great  dis- 
coveries will  become  abundant  when  correspondence 
as  a  principle  of  deduction  enters  upon  the  wealth 
of  natural  knowledge.     Theology  will  fill  photology 
with  attributes,  as  the  light  of  the  eye  is  opened 
upwards  to  the  true  light  that  enlightens  every  man 
who  comes  into  the  world.  The  Word  made  flesh,  the 
Logos  of  John,  is  the  Pisgah  from  which  science  in 
Sw'edenborg    sees    before    it   a   promised    land    of 
deductive  knowledges   covering   the  whole  field  of 
natural  light. 

LXXVII. 


ANALOGY. 

Analogy  has  been  mentioned  above:  it  is  a  lesser 
term  than  correspondency,  and  implies  the  resem- 
blance and  looking  of  forms  to  each  other  on  the 
same  plane  of  thought  and  observation.  A  mouse 
is  analogous  to  an  elephant,  and  a  cat  to  a  lion,  but 
the  two  beings  do  not  correspond.  A  spiritual 
horse,  which  is  a  formal  manifestation  in  the  higher 
world  of  some  organic  understanding  of  spiritual 
truth  in  the  society  in  whose  fields  he  moves,  cor- 
responds to  our  natural  horses;  and  is  the  proto- 


ANALOGY, 


299 


morph  or  divine  seed  of  them;  for  the  planes  of  cor- 
respondence   are    creative;    the    higher   being    an 
exact  vivifying  seed  to  the  natural  matrix  of  the 
lower;  so  that  it  is  true  that  horses  are  conceived  in 
the  sun,  but  in  the  spiritual  sun,  where  they  are  the 
forms  of  divine  reason,  and  whence  they  are  projected 
as  successive  equine  architecture,  each  inhabited  by 
an  understanding  soul  as  its  reason  of  being,  until 
they  appear  as  material  horses  in  the  world.     This 
is  Genesis;  the  divine  forms  of  things,  the  divine 
thoughts,  divinely  intellectual,  luminous,  self-evident, 
condescending  through  the  separate  heavens,  clothed 
upon  with  beautiful  appearances  in  each,  every  ap- 
pearance rationally  equated  with  its  indwelling  light 
of  soul,  and  closing  at  last,  by  seed,  germ,  and  birth, 
through   a   similar  generated  form,   in  the  animal 
of  the  earth.     This  is  Protomorphism,  the  creative 
Word  moving  organically  in  and  from  heaven,  and 
exactly  opposite  in  doctrine  to  Protoplasmism,  which 
is  the  slime-word  of  the  earthly  mind. 

Here  we  see  again,  and  the  thought  is  so  difficult, 
though  now  and  then  self-evident,  that  it  is  well  to 
hold  it  whenever  it  is  caught,  that  the  light,  the 
movement,  the  divine  gift  of  science  which  is  travel- 
ling to  our  human  system,  and  which  comes  from  a 
new  sun  of  righteousness,  will  not  comport  with 
killing  living  creatures  for  the  secrets  which  they  do 
not  contain;  but  will  consist  in  perceiving  their 
affections  and  carefully  correlating  these  with  their 
incarnation,  which  is  nothing  but  their  loves 
built  out  into  flesh,  and  flowing  forth  in  their 
living  habits;  and  then  in  noting  the  revealed  cor- 
respondence of  these  affections  with  their  spiritual 
qualities;  the  mental  analogues,  as  a  third  term,  being 
elicited   afterwards.       In    this   way   alone,    earthly 


300 


ANALOGY. 


science  gains  a  soul,  and  that  soul  owns  a  Lord ;  and 
the  intellectual  mind  can  have  for  constant  gain  of 
theory  the  organic  passage  of  those  souls  into  the 
natural  lives  which  they  illuminate,  and  with  which 
they  rationally  cohere. 

Sailinof  aofainst  the  stream  of  creation,  and  ignor- 
ing  creation  as  a  fact,  analogy  of  the  lowest  kind  has 
been  largely  worked  of  late.     Now  analogy,  without 
correspondency,  is  the  Serbonian  bog  of  science  into 
which  its  armies  sink  whole.     For  because  of  the 
correspondence  of  all  nature  to  God,  and  to  man.  there 
is  nothinor  in  the  world,  whether  natural  or  artificial, 
that  is  not  in  some  real  sense  analogous  to  every - 
thinof  else.     The  lines  of  nature  are  all  fluent  with 
analogies.     All  the  species  under  a  genus  are  ana- 
logues.    Considered  irreverently,  a  certain  apishness 
reigns  through  mere  nature;  and  mere  nature  can  be, 
and  is,  so  considered.     Cucumbers  are  like  smelts. 
Certain  plants  are  like  butterflies,  certain  beasts  like 
men,  and  certain  men  like  beasts;  the  latter  in  no 
bad   sense,    but    as    suggestive    resemblance   often 
noticed.      In   these   analogies,   which   are   general, 
creation  is  not  imported.     They  are  testimonies  to 
the  unity  and  harmony  and  dovetailing  of  nature, 
and  to  the  oneness  of  its  source;  as  it  were  marks  of 
perpetual  brotherhood  and  sisterhood  and  of  all  near 
and  remote  relationship,  springing  up  everywhere  on 
the  way  of  things.     But  they  do  not  mean  that  one 
thing  is  made  out  of  another.     So  to  speak,  they  are 
all  matter-relationships,  a  flock  of  maters  or  wombs 
with  no  masculine  principle  in  their  midst.     So  they 
are  all  of  one  sex;  they  fit  series  regarded   from 
without,  but  not  organism,  and  engender  nothing. 
To  separate  them  from  their  final  causes  is  to  forbid 
generation,  and  yet  expect  gestation;  out  of  which 


ANALOGY.  30  J 

conditions  nothing  but  windy  disgrace  can  come. 
Nurse  science  may  make  all  the  baby  linen  for  ex- 
pected children,  and  have  the  basket  of  appointments 
with  the  pincushion  ready,  but  the  children  will 
never  appear:  there  is  nothing  organic  inside  to 
evolve.  For  conception  to  take  place,  previous  cor- 
respondence of  substantial  final  causes  with  natural 
eflfects  or  matrices,  is  wanted;  and  in  the  present 
voluntary  widowhood  of  science  from  her  Lord  and 
Master,  this  correspondence  is  not  given. 

If  these  considerations  are  not  admitted,  absur- 
dities of  method    ensue.      For   as   everything   has 
points  of  likeness  to  everything,  any  line  of  departure 
may  be  taken  to  arrive  at  a  result.     Any  organic 
mite  may  as  well  begin  the  series  which  is  to  end  by 
evolution  in  man,  as  any  other;  a  forked  radish  may 
be  set  up  as  plausibly  as  another  form ;  it  only  wants 
to  evolve  life,  and  a  good  human  head  instead  of  a 
grassy  top,  and  the  work  is  done.     The  evolutionists 
draw   such   great   bills   on  nature   payable  on   de- 
mand,  that  this   claim  might   easily   be   included. 
Moreover,  they  expect  that  nature  will  honour  mere 
pretences  or  imitations,  whereas  these  when  formally 
made,  sicken  conception.     Coming  near  to  man  in 
seeming,  the  imitations  of  him,  the  apes,  are  more 
remote  from  his  qualities,  excepting  when  he  is  a  fool, 
than  other  beasts;  just  as  all  apishness  is  the  very 
aversion  of  the  thing  aped;  and  when  the  thing  is 
high,  and  the  intention  in  front  of  it  apish,  the  case 
is  one  of  profanation.     Take  the  true  qualities  of  an 
animal  as  the  substance  of  its  nearness  to  man,  its 
tameableness,  its  docility  or  capacity  for  education, 
its  power  of  serving  in  the  order  of  society,  its  look- 
mg  to  man  and  attachment  and  aflfection,  its  march  of 
progress  up  and  down  with  its  masters  fortunes;  its 


,t' 


I 


F 


I 


302 


ANALOGY. 


?» 


cognizance  of  little  children,  its  gratitude  and  clieer- 
fuf  obedience  and  pliancy  to  the  home ;  and  it  is 
obvious  that  in  these  shaping  qualities  you  have  a 
quarry  of  animal  marble  that  might  be  hewn  into 
the  image  of  a  man  if  nature  was  anybody,  and  could 
do  it.     Moreover,  a  horse  is  nearer  to  a  cavalier  even 
in  looks,  and  a  lamb  to  a  baby,  than  an  ape  or  a 
young  ape  is  to  either.  Under  orders  for  a  few  million 
ages  from  within,  a  horse's  long  nose  would  more 
easily  pull  back  and  shorten  into  a  man's,  than  an 
ape  s  spring  out  where  there  is  no  quality  inside  to 
push  it.     The  pressure  of  soft  things  can  control  the 
form  of  hard  ones;  stones  hollow  by  water,  bones 
are    yielding    before    aneurisms,    and     skulls     are 
plastic  to  brains;  matter  is  the  clay  and  force  the 
potter;  but  the  evolutionists  make  the  hard  and  un- 
yielding to  be  active,  and  the  fluid  and  forcible  to 
be  passive;  the  fixed  grin  to  be  the  origin  of  human 
expression,  and  mimicry  the  faculty  pregnant  with 
mind,  instead  of  being,  as  it  is,  the  stage  and  theatre 

of  folly. 

*' Shall  the  clay  say  to  him  that  fashioneth  it, 
What  makest  thou?  or  thy  work,  He  hath  no  hands? 
Woe  unto  him  that  saith  unto  his  father,  What 
begettest  thou?  or  to  the  woman,  What  hast  thou 
brought  forth?"  (Isaiah  xlv.  9, 10.) 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  the  ape  should  play  a 
distinguished  part  in  modern  scientism;  and  that 
this  should  arrive  by  natural  evolution  and  selection 
at  dmia  naturce  magister  et  mterpres;  because  pre- 
tentious and  aggressive  analogy  is  a  mental  ape  with 
an  endless  imaginary  world  for  his  grimaces;  the 
very  ^'missing  link"  craved  by  the  philosophers  of 
apery.  It  is  not  seen  to  be  an  ape,  because  it  sits 
with  its  back  to  the  objects  it  mocks.     But  not  the 


ANALOGY, 


303 


less  does  it  mould  its  thoughts  upon  mimicry  of  that 
which  it  is  turned  away  from.     Having  seen  man 
already,  it  makes  him  out  of  the  monkey :  it  imitates 
him  into  its  philosophy :  this  is  apish.    So  all  through 
nature  it  takes  the  higher  creature  and  result  from  e'x- 
perience,  and  then  mimics  it  into  hypothesis.     It  puts 
man  into  monkey,  and  then  gets  him  out  of  monkey. 
The  process  is  one  of  rendering  things  subjective  in 
order  to  deal  with  them  as  you  please;  in  the  present 
case,  to  make  men-apes  into  men.    Again  we  come  to 
the  result,  that  men-apes,  not  uncommon  to  experience, 
are  the  most  unplastic  stony  clay  for  this  potter;  the 
type  of  what  cannot  be  humanized;  the  stamina  of 
jest  that  can  be  raised  towards  nothing;  the  hardest 
meanest  grins  of  things;  the  breed  of  mockery  and 
profanity  in  form.     Dean  Swift  saw  the  obverse  of 
this  when  in  the  decay  of  mankind  into  Yahoo-apes 
he  placed  horses  as  the  superior  creatures  worthy  to 
Hve   upon  the  earth.     "The   dust  of  the  ground" 
spoken  of  in  the  second  chapter  of  Genesis,  with  the 
Lord  God  forming  man  out  of  it,  signifies  in  a  field 
that  cannot  be  entered  by  science,  a  neutral  material 
close  to  the  creative  hand,  and  not  charged  with  the 
fixed  gravitation  of  the  gorilla. 

In  the  former  pages  of  this  work,  we  have  spoken 
of  the  circulation  of  evil,  and  shown  that  the  parts  of 
it  cohere  in  one  mental  system  or  man-monster,  the 
organs  of  which  are  sympathetic  with  each  other,'  and 
excite  each  other  to  action,  producing  from  one  stem 
the  most  various  functions  of  crime.  These  look 
different,  as  the  evils  of  the  heart  look  difl^erent  from 
the  evils  of  the  loins;  yet  they  are  one  as  their 
society  is  one.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  circula- 
tion offalses.  In  any  age  the  theological  falses  are 
reproduced  in   the   scientific  falses.      The   men  of 


304 


ANALOGY, 


science  have  indeed  no  idea  that  they  are  the  apes  of 
these  ^^ betters."     But  there  is  only  one  mental  body 
in  the  world,  and  theology  is  always  the  head  of  it, 
and  science  the  automatic  spine  of  that  head.     In 
this  system  all  lies  are  one  grand  organic  lie.     The 
faith  in  the  evolution  of  the  lower  into  the  higher 
ex  se,  of  the  ape  or  of  any  animal  into  the  man,  the 
faith'  that  justifies   that   doctrine,   is   a   subsidiary 
branch  of  the  old  church  faith,  that  men,  by  a  happy 
impress  on  their  minds,  whatever  their  past  lives, 
their   past   aperies,   can  be  translated  and  become 
angels.     The  gorilla,  nature-struck  on  some  point  of 
him,  becomes  a  man  by  the  same  process  by  which  a 
rascal,  faith-struck,  becomes  an  angel.     The  "imme- 
diate glory"  of  the  happy  rogue  is  assumed  by  the 
incautious  theologian;  wiiile  the  scientific  man  omits 
definite  time;  but  this  does  not  impair  the  parallel- 
ism.    In  both  cases  the  past  life  is  of  no  account, 
and  a  scratch  from  without  or  within  is  the  new 
determinant.     The  rest  of  the  falses  of  science  can 
be  paralleled  with  falses  of  theology,  doctrine  by 
doctrine ;  and  the  theological  fibres  that  animate  the 
infideUties  of  science   be  traced   anatomically  into 
exact  strands  of  the  motor  and  sensitive  system  of 
the  general  scientific  mind. 

Let  it  be  repeated  then  that  analogy  is  but  the 
relation  of  likes  to  likes,  and  demonstrates  kindred 
and  consanguinity  all  through  the  world ;  but  cor- 
respondence is  the  deeper  harmonic  relation  of  oppo- 
sites  to  opposites;  their  personal  fitting  because 
they  are  oppositely  analogous ;  and  their  creative- 
ness  because  of  their  fitness  which  is  their  mutual 
love.  Without  this  acknowledgment  of  correspon- 
dence, science  is  a  lone  woman,  ever  barren,  and  ever 
waiting  to  see  reflected  in  her  mind  the  outcome  of 


CORRESPONDENCY,  305 

the  children  of  creation;  with  the  acknowledgment, 
she  is  a  married  faculty  of  two  minds  in  one,  the 
spiritual  and  the  natural;  and  in  her  combined  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  she  can  conceive  from  the 
Lord  the  conception  and  birth  of  the  creatures, 
one  by  one,  if  it  is  needed  to  be  shown  her  for  uses 
above  her  exploring  sphere. 


•r 


LXXVIII. 


CORRESPONDENCY. 

Correspondency  is  the  harmonic  relation  between 
a  higher  and  a  lower  plane;  and  imports  that  the  two 
spiritually  and  naturally  cohabit,  and  their  union  in 
the  divine  order  is  followed  by  perpetual  creations. 

The  Word  is  written  by  mere  correspondences,  in 
order  that  it  may  unite  in  its  embrace  the  two  worlds 
to  which  every  man  and  woman  is  meant  to  belong 
if  he  or  she  pleases,  namely,  heaven  and  the  earth. 
We  have  seen  that  correspondences  are  of  immense 
force;  and  that  they  import  the  introduction  of  all 
souls  by  influx  into  all  bodies;  that  they  sustain  the 
frame  of  nature,  and  lift  into  higher  animation  the 
life  of  mankind;  that  they  come  from  within,  and 
are  the  way  of  creation.     They  are  also  the  way  of 
redemption.     The   Lord  came  into   the   world  by 
birth  that  He  might  live  here  as  Himself,  and  con- 
quering the  world,  the  flesh  and  the  devil,  present 
in  nature  where  there  was  to  His  vision  no  man, 
one  man  who  by  His  victories  was  Jehovah,  and  is 
the  Lord :  a  plenary  correspondence  of  God  on  earth. 
His  visible  frame,  and  His  words  and  works,  in- 
volved divinity;  and  every  power  of  creation  flowed 

u 


1  - 


3o6     THE  WORD  CONJOINS  HEAVEN  &-  EARTH 

then  and  since  through  His  Divine  Human  nature. 
He  testified  that  His  human  form  is  the  end  and 
cause  of  all  things ;  and  that  the  redemption  of  man 
lies  within  it.  He  is  perpetually  present  now  by 
correspondences  in  the  planes  and  firmaments  of  the 
Word. 


LXXIX. 

THE   WORD    CONJOINS    HEAVEN   AND    EARTH. 

The  "Word   is   not   doctrinal   alone,  or   much  so 
upon  the  surface,  only  sufiicient  for  the  guidance  of 
men's   lives,    not   for   full   comprehension   by  their 
natural  understandings.     It  is  spiritually  conjunc- 
tive, and  therefore  creative  and  regenerative.    It  con- 
sists therefore  not  in  moral  or  metaphysical  terms, 
but  in  created  forms,  historical  and  visional.     There 
are  in  it  the  two  planes,  of  induction,  and  of  deduc- 
tion ;  as  it  were  the  conditions  of  a  divine  battery 
of  truth  and  love.     And  the  mode  of  it  in  feeblest 
word  and  conception  is  like  this.     It  is  extant,  an 
open  book,  in  all  the  heavens,  and  upon   all   the 
earths,  with  a  difierence  according  to  every  race,  and 
every  sphere.     When  it  is  devoutly  read  here,  its 
images  strike  the  natural  mind,  and  the  meaning  is 
absorbed :  if  the  reading  is,  *'  I  saw  a  lamb  stand  on 
the  Mount  Zion,"  the  mind  reverently  apprehends 
somewhat   of  the   Lord's  presence  in  the    central 
innocency   of  His  omnipotent  love  :   the   spiritual 
sense  shows  this  to  mean  the  Lord  in  His  divine 
humanity,  in  which  He  is  essential  innocence.     But 
by   correspondence,  the  angels   who  are  with  the 
man,  seeing  the  same  form,  "  a  lamb  stand  on  the 


THE  WORD  CONJOINS  HE  A  VEN  6-  EARTH     307 

Mount  Zion,"  think  in  their  way,  not  from  the 
symbol  to  the  thing  symbolized,  but  obversely, 
from  the  divine  humanity  to  the  lamb,  which  is  the 
visible  presentation.  Thus  the  spiritual  and  natural 
thought  come  conjointly  and  creatively  together  in 
the  Word;  because  there  is  no  space,  but  similarity 
of  state  conjoins  and  completes. 

How  often  do  those  who  are  still  left  on  earth, 
resort  to  a  place,  or  a  book,  or  a  hymn,  which  was  a 
favourite  with  a  dear  mother,  for  example,  who  has 
passed  into  the  heavens,   in  the  secret  hope  that 
there   is  some  communion  thus  with  the  departed. 
This  is  a  yearning  for  correspondence  with  that  soul 
in  all  senses.     If  it  be  cherished ^in  the  Lord,  it 
cannot   but   consummate    some    communication   of 
the  affections.     But  unless  this  be  sought  through 
the  Word,  there  is  no  sufficient  agreement  in  the 
telegraphic   language   between   the  upper   and  the 
lower  country.     It  touches  love,  but  is  not  an  arti- 
culate voice.     Now  the  Lord  when  He  went  away 
from  our  natural  senses,  left  a  book,  the  Bible,  the 
Word,  in  which  we  can  always  walk  when  we  want 
to  find  Him,  and  also  when  we  yearn  to  find  what- 
ever is  good  and  true  from  Him  in  each  other;  in 
which  the  words  are  real  at  both  ends,  under  the 
death  line,  and  over  the  death  line ;  and  understood 
in  the    same    sense   at    both    ends,    though   from 
nature  to  spirit  in  the  one,  and  from  spirit  to  spiri- 
tual form  and   then   to  natural  form  in  the  other. 
A  book  thus  of  divine  remembrances  and  conjunc- 
tions.    That  book,  the  Bible,  as  Swedenborg  says, 
is  dead  in  itself;  but  is  continually  vivified  by  the 
Lord   through  those  who  have   it  and  love   it  in 
heaven  and  upon  earth.     For  the  purpose  of  con- 
joining heaven  and  earth,  it  is  written  in  an  im- 


If 

h 


3o8    THE  WORD  CONJOINS  HE  A  VEN  &*  EARTH. 

mortal  language;  not  in  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  or 
English,  but  in  the  language  of  correspondences. 
These,  in  other  words,  are  the  forms  of  the  creation, 
and  they  contain  the  same  spirit,  and  therefore  have 
the  same  meanincy,  in  both  worlds.  And  thence  it 
is,  as  was  said  before,  that  devout  readers  on  both 
sides  of  the  grave  come  together  in  this  divine 
appointment,  and  meet  in  sacred  affections,  and 
corresponding  lines  of  truth.  It  is  genuine  spiritual 
communion  over  which  death  has  no  power,  because 
natural  personality  is  eliminated  from  the  holy  place. 
By  the  same  provision  the  Lord  is  met  everywhere 
in  the  Word,  and  the  spiritual  sense  conjoins  itself 
with  the  natural  in  the  mind  of  the  devout  reader. 

If  such  a  great  fact  exists,  if  there  be  a  divine 
organ  for  conjoining  all  kindred  minds  beyond  the 
power  of  death  to  sever  them,  and  such  a  conjugial 
apposition  of  planes  of  life  between  heaven  and 
earth,  such  a  marriage  in  the  Word  ;  if  divine  truth 
spiritual  and  divine  truth  natural  creatively  fit  each 
other  thus;  it  is  plain  that  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  and  the  realization  of  the  Lord  s  prayer 
in  society,  and  the  creation  of  its  church,  depend 
upon  the  open  revelation  of  the  Word  given  in  the 
writings  of  Swedenborg.  The  possibility,  the 
knowledge,  and  the  science  of  this  are  shown  in  no 
other  way.  It  is  a  rational,  ascertainable  revelation, 
which  though  undiscoverable  by  the  human  mind, 
may  be  verified  by  it,  and  afterwards  be  accepted  as 
a  divine  possession;  standing  above  the  mind  as  a 
feeding  light  and  love,  the  source  of  all  truth,  genius 
and  faculty. 

It  can  be  studied,  though  only  on  its  own  con- 
ditions, of  "  dubitative  affirmative,"  not  "  dubitative 
negative,"  and  a  reverent,  humble,  teachable  and 


THE  APOCAL  YPSE  RE VEALED.  309 

most  open  spirit  of  inquiry  is  the  first  condition  of 
conditions.     In  this  it  is  not  altogether  unhke  other 
subjects  new  to  the  mind.     The  student,  generally 
speaking,  must  be  a  pupil  of  the  thing  studied,  and 
not  Its  master,  or  lawgiver.     He  must  accept  the 
axioms  of  mathematics  before  he  can  enter  the  pro- 
positions.    For  the  occasion  at  any  rate  he  must 
open  perception  itself  to  affirm  the  axiom  of  a  Lord 
God,  of  a  heaven,  of  a  spiritual  world,  and  a  spirit 
m  man ;  and  the  postulate  of  a  revelation  having 
personal  reference  to  himself  and  to  all  other  beings. 
He  may  with  these  provisional  states  of  admission 
upon  him  approach  the  Word  as  the  new  kingdom  to 
be  studied.    And  if  he  can  conquer  himself  so  far  as 
to  discern  that  he  knows  nothing  about  the  subject 
to  begin  with,  and  therefore  has  at  first  no  objections 
to  make,  he  is  equipped  for  a  fair  and  hopeful  entry 
into  the  divine  mathesis. 


LXXX. 


THE  APOCALYPSE  REVEALED. 


Perhaps  the  best  book  that  the  reverent  scientist, 
who  owns  his  emptiness  on  these  subjects,  can  study,' 
is  The  Apocalypse  Eevealed,  by  Swedenborg.  It 
has  many  qualifications  for  instruction.  Not  being 
historical,  but  written  by  pure  correspondences,  the 
Apocalypse  in  its  natural  sense  does  not  carry  the 
mmd  in  a  strong  current,  but  the  symbols  are  free  to 
receive  and  bring  down  the  spiritual  life.  The 
white  horse  and  his  rider  can  more  easily  signify  the 
Lord  supreme  in  the  pure  understanding  of  the  truth 
of  the  Word,  than  if  the  symbol  were  part  and  parcel  of 


.1 1 


M^ 


310  THE  APOCAL  YFSE  RE  VEALED. 

apparently  mundane  history.     For  the  learner  there 
is  the  advantage  of  something  abstract  and  mathe- 
matical in  the  concrete  images  which  body  forth  the 
revelation.     In  one  sense  they  are  the  truths,  ideas 
and  events  of  the  divine  intellect  in  apprehensible 
forms.     And  the  symbols   being  a  great   handful, 
often  ^repeated,  and  always  with  reference  and  ex- 
actitude, as  from  past  to  present  propositions,  with 
constant  backward  openings   to  living  axioms  and 
postulates  of  spiritual  necessity,  the  working  of  them 
so  to  speak,  is  learnt;  the  woof  from  the  inner  Word 
to  the  outer  is  noticed  in  its  lines;  and  the  symbols 
are  confirmed  in  their  meanings  by  repetition  to  the 
scientific  faculty.     Then  the  Apocalypse,  the  easiest 
book  in  the  Word  to  follow  in  its  spiritual  sense,  is 
also  the  ultimate  book  of  the  Word,  and  illuminates 
the  spiritual  sense  of  the  whole  as  the  end  of  the 
divine  drama.     A  perceptive  delight  follows  in  the 
discovery  that  the  most  inscrutable  member  of  the 
biblical  records  opens  its  bosom  most  easily,  and  is  the 
least  secretive,  to  the  spiritual  key  in  the  only  hand 
which  can  unlock  it.    Moreover,  the  Apocalypse  with 
overflowing  light  treats  of  the  end  of  the  old  church, 
and  of  the  beginning  of  the  New  Church,  or  New 
Jerusalem,  and  consequently  of  the  prodigious  for- 
tunes and  destinies  of  the  present  day;  and  thus  the 
spiritual  sense  correlates  with  history,  and  is  con- 
firmed by  it,  though  it  cannot  be  criticized  from 
history;  because  it  does  not  treat  of  outward  events, 
but  of  the  principles  and  institutions  of  good  and 
evil  as  they  work  towards  their  ends  and  consumma- 
tions in  the  natural  world.     The  prophetic  nature  of 
the  spiritual  sense,  its  opening  from  above  into  the 
time  and  space  of  mankind,  also  reveals  itself  under 
a  scientific  garb,  and  rationally  illustrates  prophecy, 


THE  A  UTHORITY  OF  S  WEDENBORG.        3 1 1 

while  it  points  with  open  hand  to  the  history  which 
is  soon  to  come.  It  is  the  book  of  the  doom  of  the 
churches  and  the  anti-churches,  and  treats  necessarily 
of  science  itself  in  its  old  form  and  in  its  new.  The 
book  of  the  divine  exploration  of  humanity  before 
the  last  judgment  in  1757;  of  the  mode  of  the 
judgment;  of  the  new  order  which  succeeds;  and  of 
the  Divine  Humanity  as  all  in  all,  the  King  of 
Kings  and  Lord  of  Lords.  It  is  not  however  a 
commentator  s  interpretation  that  Swedenborg  shows, 
a  meaning  of  the  letter,  but  a  new  concrete  Word,  a 
new  spiritual  Word  or  body,  which  is  a  soul  and  a 
mind  in  the  mind  and  body  of  the  letter;  just  as  t 
man  in  the  spiritual  world  is  not  an  abstraction  and 
metaphysic  of  the  man  in  nature,  but  a  complete 
man  in  every  sense  of  the  term;  an  immeasurably 
detailed  man.  This  is  a  stumblinof-block  to  the 
metaphysician  and  the  scientist;  he  expects  a  pure 
reason  and  he  gets  a  man,  clothed  and  in  his  right 
mind,  instead;  and  so  in  the  Word,  he  expects  a 
pure  exegesis,  and  he  finds  a  new  Word  on  a  second 
divine  plane  of  reality. 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

A  word  is  proper  here  concerning  the  authority  of 
Swedenborg.  It  seems  as  if  it  were  appealed  to  as 
absolute  and  unquestionable,  but  it  is  not  so.  It  has 
no  likeness  to  the  authority  of  a  church,  of  a  voting 
council,  or  of  an  infallible  Pope.  It  decrees  nothing. 
He  himself  says  virtually.  Head  and  judge  of  what 
I  say,  but  wuth  reason :  use  the  rational  faculty  fairly 


fl 


*L 
.•I 


s\ 


\ 


It 


I 


312         THE  A UTHORITY  OF  SWEDENBORG, 

and  honestly  with  all  its  light  upon  me.     Over   a 
spiritual   temple   of  the   New   Jerusalem    he   saw 
written,  ''Nunc  licet  I'  and  the  interpretation  was, 
"Now  it  is  allowed  to  mankind  to  enter  intellec- 
tually into  the  mysteries  of  faith."     His  authority 
therefore  for  personal  things  is  that  of  his  personal 
character;  and  for  the  doctrines  and  principles  put 
forth,  their  verisimilitude  as  the  theory  and  truth  of 
each  case  before  inscrutable,  and  then  their  commen- 
surateness  with   reason,  and   lastly  their   reaching 
down  into  the  common  sense  of  mankind,  where  they 
meet  the  whole  question  of  use  to  man,  and  settle  in 
it  and  found  upon  it.     In  short,  the  authority  of 
Swedenborg  is  the  constant  verdict  of  the  jury  of  all 
the  best  faculties  of  human  nature  and  knowledge 
proclaiming  with  a  substantial  voice.  This  is  so,  and 
this  is  so.    The  authority  is  therefore  continuous  and 
correlate  with  the  authority  of  the  multiplication 
table,  though  the  apprehending  faculty  and  condi- 
tions are  different.     And  it  is  irrational  and  unneces- 
sary to  embargo  the  whole  assent  of  any  man  to  all 
Swedenborg  s  positions,  when  many  a  man  does  not 
know  the  positions,  and  cannot  assent  upon  them 
rationally,  and  as  it  were  swear  to  them.     What  we 
do  know  is  so  self-evident  at  last,  and  so  light-giving, 
that  the  mind  need  not  doubt  that  the  rest  is  worthy 
of  the  illuminated  man ;  but  no  dogma  of  authority 
can  be  reared  to  cover  unknown  grounds  or  preten- 
sions, where  the  exercise  of  the  rational  mind  is 
appealed  to  in  order  that  the  authority  itself  may  be 
authenticated.     In  a  word,  the  old  churches  appeal 
to  privilege  and  traditive  dogma,  or  to  blind  faith, 
and  the  Pope  to  his  own  infallibility,  as  authoritative ; 
Swedenborg  appeals  to  the  human  mind  itself  in  its 
rational  faculty,  and  claims  from  it,  as  it  opens  more 


IMPERFECTION  DOES  NOT  HINDER. 


Z^Z 


and  more,  a  new  authority  of  its  own  in  spiritual 
things;  the  authority  of  private  reason  first,  and  of 
universal  private  use. 


LXXXII. 

HUMAN    IMPERFECTION    DOES    NOT    HINDER. 

Nor  is  Swedenborgs  use  to  mankind  deranged 
in  consequence  of  any  shortcomings  which  were  the 
result  of  the  imperfections  of  his  mind,  or  of  the 
limitation  of  his  age.     A  man  is  no  perfect  being 
who  can  supersede  the  faculties  of  other  men;  and 
his  instrumentality  for  high  ends,  while  it  confers  all 
its  benefits  upon  his  fellow-creatures,  inevitably  de- 
clares his  own  struggles  and  imperfections.      The 
higher  the  instrumentaHty,  the  more  the  divine  way 
and  light  in  it  reveal  the  weakness  of  the  medium. 
When  Swedenborg  tells  us  that  the  spiritual  sense 
of  the  Word  was  communicated  to  him  by  no  angel 
or  spirit,  but  by  the  Lord  alone,  it  need  not  import 
that  his  rational  mind  to  which  the  communication 
was  given,  was  at  all  times  and  in  all  respects  ade- 
quate to  the  message;  that  his  knowledge  of  the 
letter  of  Scripture  was  unfailing,  or  his  scholarship 
miraculous,   and  so,   beyond   the   condition   of  the 
learning  of  his  age.     His  receptive  faculties  were 
natural,  though  clearly  illuminated.     Being  natural, 
they  belonged  to  the  eighteenth  century  and  not  to 
the  nineteenth.     The  river  of  truths  which  he  dis- 
covered to  men,  the  Euphrates  and  the  Nile  and  the 
Thames  of  the  Word,  is  water  of  life  from  the  Lord 
alone.     His  shape  of  statement  is  in  the  form  of  his 
own  mind,  and  shares  its  limits.      A  great  writer 


J 


I 


!|1 


111 


314        IMPERFECTION  DOES  NOT  HINDER. 

complains  that  all  his  angels  and  spirits  Swedenbor- 
gize.     The  complaint  strikes  at  the  root  of  author- 
ship     He  might  as  well  object  that  Shakespear  has 
written  his  own  English  instead  of  all  the  languages 
of  all  his  characters.     What  else  could  the  spirits  and 
angels  do,  seeing  that  in  order  to  be  presented  to 
this  world  at  all,  their  high  speech  had  to  be  trans- 
lated into  Swedenborg's  natural  mind;  for  they  could 
not  be  reported  verbatim  where,  in  their  articles,  the 
two  lancruages  and  planes  are  absolutely  incommen- 
surate. ''Rightly  seen,  the  personality  of  Swedenborg 
in  the  case  is  of  twofold  use.     First,  it  bnngs  the 
matters  home  to  us  men  because  they  come  through 
a  plain  man's  voice.     Secondly,  it  constitutes  freedom 
along  with  rationality  into  the  proper  student  of  the 
writings  of  this  herald.     You  are  to  take  nothing 
for  granted ;  only  keep  your  mind  open  to  the  good, 
the  true,  and  the  useful.     You  need  quash  no  criti- 
cism, provided  on  this  ground  of  openness,  it  pro- 
ceeds from  the  dubitative  affirmative,  not  from  the 
dubitative  negative  bias  of  the  heart.     The  integrity 
of  the  writings  of  Swedenborg  is  their  claim  to  the 
attention  of  mankind;  and  this  itself  is  an  organon 
for  clearing  away  mistakes  and  imperfections;  let  us 
rather  say,  for  coming  to  a  full  perception  of  the 
progressive  character  of  the  works. 

The  Word  of  the  Lord  stands  now  on  the  same 
ground  thus  far,  that  the  letter  apart  or  in  itself 
belongs  to  the  past,  and  reflects  the  minds  and 
styles  of  many  writers;  and  moreover,  in  the  Old 
Testament,  is  addressed  to  a  people  who  required  a 
writing  by  appearances  which  are  not  apposite  to 
Christians;  for  Jehovah  with  Jewish  passions  is  the 
divinity  of  Judaism:  and  this  appearance  of  the 
Lord  is  not  a  real  truth.     Yet  the  spiritual  sense  is 


A  NEW  MIND  FROM  CORRESPONDENCES,     315 

contained,  and  is  the  precious  kernel  defended 
against  Judaism  by  the  rough  shell  of  the  letter 
which  exercised  divine  statesmanship  of  uses  for  a 
time. 

The  spiritual  sense  will  do  a  work  in  restoring  the 
canon  of  Holy  Scripture.  Criticism  is  paving  the 
way,  though  it  appears  to  be  vivisecting  and  destroy- 
ing the  letter.  But  when  the  spiritual  sense  is  read, 
and  new  generations  live  in  it,  and  in  true  doctrines 
derived  from  the  letter,  an  illuminated  canon  can  be 
the  result,  and  readings  be  adopted  from  perception 
divinely  given,  so  that  each  age  shall  be  signalized 
by  some  restoration  of  the  jods  and  tittles  of  the 
Word,  whose  whole  kingdom  is  to  come. 


IF- 


LXXXIIL 


A    NEW    MIND    FROM    CORRESPONDENCES. 


To  return  to  the  subject  of  correspondences,  it  will 
be  found  to  have  an  important  bearing  upon  the 
fields  of  human  knowledge.  It  is  in  fact,  so  far  as  it 
is  revealed,  a  world  of  trutlis  standing  over  things,  and 
waiting  to  be  incorporated  with  them,  and  to  give 
them  living  souls.  Take  for  example  the  correspon- 
dences of  animals,  or  of  elements,  in  the  Word;  of 
the  horse,  the  cow,  the  sheep,  the  dog;  or  of  light 
and  heat.  The  horse  corresponds  to  the  understand- 
ing of  truth;  the  cow,  to  good  natural  affections  in 
their  organic  verity;  for  affections  are  forms,  if  we 
can  see  them,  and  live  upon  the  spiritual  hills: 
the  sheep  corresponds  to  the  good  of  innocence, 
which  is  an  organic  inhabitant  intimate  in  all  heaven, 
and  sheep  and  lambs  appear  around  it  as  its  ultima- 


i 


316     A  NEW  MIND  FROM  CORRESPONDENCES, 

tions :  the  Good  Shepherd  can  have  none  other  than 
his  own  innocence  as  his  flock.     The  dog  corresponds 
to  lusts,  which  are  organic ;  and  in  the  plastic  world 
above,  these  work  their  way  forth,  and  show  dogs  in 
the  spiritual  sphere.     Light  corresponds  to  divine 
light,  which  is  the  daylight  of  truth  from  the  Lord; 
and  heat  to  His  divine  love.     The  influence  of  these 
correspondences  upon  the  minds  which  receive  them, 
is  this.     They  stand  within,  impregnable  to  natural- 
ism, and  invisible  to  its  eyes,  and  straightly  limit  it 
to  the  surfaces  and  skins  and  hairy  bodies  of  things ; 
they  have  done  with  it  excepting  that  it  is  under 
their  feet.     And  because  the  correspondences  stand 
in  a  great  army  in  the  Word,  and  front  nature  now 
friendly  to  spiritual  truth,  the  new  mind  cannot  but 
endeavour   to   discover   the.  spiritual   truth  in  the 
natural;  to  perceive  in  the  sheep  for  instance,  the 
very  table  and  signature  of  innocence,  which  is  its 
explanatory  soul ;  to  read  this  in  its  habits  and  ways, 
in  its  form,  in  its  organization,  in  its  little  lambs :  in 
short  to  work  this  innocent  science  from  above  down- 
wards, or  from  the  Word  of  God  to   the  works. 
This  royal  process  entitles  reason  afresh  as  it  passes 
through  us.     The  same  holds  of  the  other  instances. 
This  therefore  is  the  march  of  divine  self-evidence 
upon  the  creation,  and  the  capture  of  it  for  the  uses 
of  the  natural  human  mind.     Of  course,  the  new 
points  of  light  are  feeble  indeed;  for  at  this  day  who 
knows  anything  rationally  and  organically  of  *^  under- 
standing of  truth,"  of  ''  good  affections,"  of  ''  the  good 
of  innocence,"   of  ''divine   light,"  and   of  '^ divine 
heat"?     But  they  are  new  points  of  light;  that  is 
the  main  first  demonstration;  and  by  the  mercy  of 
the  Lord  who  is  essential  light,  they  determine  to 
themselves  currents  of  light  according  as  they  are 


SPIRITUAL  CREATION  OF  CORRELATES      317 

implanted  in  the  affections  of  use  and  of  good.  Thus 
they  can  continually  magnify  in  light  and  certainty, 
and  learn  their  own  method,  though  in  the  most 
gradual  way;  for  the  human  mind  is  a  hard  world, 
and  the  theological  are  longer  than  the  geological 
ages.  A  wonderful  thing  is,  that  these  created 
centres  of  new  light  all  come  out  of  the  opened 
Word;  for  the  human  mind,  which  often  suggests 
correspondences  in  poetry  and  in  common  language, 
does  not  fix  them  in  fact;  it  is  not  of  their  kingdom 
until  the  Word  dominates  it.  Therefore  the  feeble- 
ness of  the  shining  of  these  knowledge-stars  in  the 
present  night,  their  remoteness,  their  newness,  their 
nearness  as  they  are  appreciated,  argues  their  solar 
quality,  and  that  each  one  of  them  is  the  indwelling 
light  and  life  of  its  own  system  of  things.  Constef 
lated  in  the  Word,  they  are,  in  their  complex,  the 
central  animating  sun  of  knowledge;  the  effort  of 
the  Word  is  with  them;  and  it  is  foreshown  with 
rational  certainty,  that  they  will  enter  the  knowing 
faculties  by  degrees,  and  show  nature  in  her  corre- 
spondences as  the  plenum  of  the  divine  wisdom :  that 
they  will  materially  proclaim  the  incarnation  of  good 
and  evil  in  every  sphere,  and  exhibit  the  physical 
world  also  as  the  ultimated  theatre  of  divine  iudo-- 
ments. 


.; 


LXXXIV. 


SPIRITUAL    CREATION    OF    CORRELATES. 

It  is  all  one  mightier  system  of  correlates.  If 
force  arrested  wdll  engender  the  new  form,  heat, 
what  is  there  against  the  revealed  fact,  that  the 
spiritual  understanding  of  the  Word  likewise  ar- 


i\ 


3 1 8      SPIRITUAL  CREA  TION  OF  CORRELA  TES. 

rested,  or  passing  to  a  new  plane,  shall  show  the 
horse-form  smitten  forth  on  the  creative  anvil  as  an 
organic  ultimate;  and  that  the  qualities  of  the 
houses,  black,  pale,  and  red,  shall  embody  and 
demonstrate  the  dire  quality  of  the  perverted  under- 
standing, and  the  white  horse  with  the  Word  of 
God  upon  him,  the  pure  understanding  \  The  cor- 
relation may  be  perfect.  Study  i^t  in  its  extent  m 
the  Word,  and  in  all  natural  knowledge  of  the 
horse  also,  and  see  whether  it  is  not  organic  know- 

^  Correlation  itself,  what  it  is,  may  be  seen  rationally 
from  these  considerations;  that  it  is  the  wreaking 
of  a  superior  internal  force  upon  a  lower  and  outer 
plane,  where  it  cannot  be  presented  in  itselt,  but 
only  re-presented  in  an  organic  or  other  image     Cor- 
respondence begins  from  God,  and  arrest  of  force 
may  stand  as  a  formula  for  it  in  its  downward  or 
creative  process.     The  supreme  creation  of  heaven, 
the  celestial  sphere,  the  protomorph  of  the  rest,  does 
not  exist  without  arrest  of  force,  for  otherwise  it 
would  be  merely  the  divinity  still ;  whereas  it  is 
distinct   creation ;    divinity   abstracting  itself,   and 
leavincr  its  likeness,  not  itself,  as  an  agent  with  a 
freedom  in  it  and  around  it;  a  likeness  capable  of 
reaction,  and  therefore  a  plane  of  resistance  to  the 
divine  love,  to  the  divine  force.     In  the  ultimate 
world  that  is  to  say  in  nature,  the  plane  of  reaction, 
or  resistance  to  the  divine  force,  stands  forth  as  the 
natural  man;  and  afterwards,  through  regeneration, 
and  then  through  death,  by  putting  off  coverings,  he 
comes  into  the  sphere  which  he  has  attained  by  his 
life  here,  and  peoples  some  plane  of  the  first  arrest 
of  divine  forces  into  the  natural,  the  spiritual,  or  the 
celestial  heavens.      Each  of  these,  like  nature,  is 


SPIRITUAL  CREATION  OF  CORRELATES      319 

made  of  planes  of  arrest  of  force,  the  lowest  plane 
always   bounding   and   supporting  the   rest.      For 
example,  the  angelic  human  affections  must  go  forth 
below  themselves,  as  well  as  to  the  Lord,  and  to 
man  around  them;  they  must  not  only,  as  South 
says,  proceed  "  in  direct  fervours  of  love  to  God,  and 
in  collateral  emissions  of  charity  to  man;"  but  they 
must  love,  and  think,  and  see,  and  act,  down  to  the 
end  of  creatures  and  creations;  and  imaging  God, 
rest  there  upon  the  goodly  universe  of  things.    This 
means  that  they  suffer  distinct  and  orderly  arrest  of 
force   in    created   and   creative  planes.      And  this 
again  means  that  striking  the  highest  plane  out  of 
themselves,  their  affections  externized  engender  by 
the  divine  force  which  is  all  in  all,  the  forms  of  all 
noble  domestic  animals,  in  which  the  affections  are 
re-presented ;  on  the  lower  ground  these  could  not 
reappear  as  angelic  men  and  women,  but  they  come 
to  the  new  Adam  as  beasts  of  heavenly  use  and 
heavenly   burden.      Cows   and   sheep  are   arrested 
good  affections  full  of  human  kindness  to  the  kind. 
So  the  thoughts  that  fly  from  these  affections,  strik- 
ing their  limit,  and  smitten  by  the  stroke  into  a  new 
order,   as   heat   arrested   becomes   light,   represent 
winged  organic  thoughts  in  the  kingdom  of  all 
noble  birds.     On  a  further  plane  of  resistance  the 
whole  vegetable  kingdom  arises  as  a  harmony  struck 
from  the  lyre  of  its  ordained  degree  of  life;  and  the 
mineral  ground  in  and  on  which  all  closes,  is  the  last 
firm   correlation   of   the   divine   love   and   wisdom 
Who  is  essential  man,  and  of  all  men  and  women 
"who  are  man  because  they  are  His  images  and  like- 
nesses. 

The  subject  seems  remote  at  first;    but  so  does 
astronomy  to  the  savage  man;  so  does  the  correla- 


% 


I 


II 


l^ 


i 


320      SPIRITUAL  CREATION  OF  CORRELATES. 

tion  of  motion  to  heat,  and  of  heat  to  light,  and  to 
magnetism.  There  is  no  ratio  between  the  latter 
terms  until  experience  has  demonstrated  the  con- 
vertibility of  the  one  into  the  other;  after  which,  in 
the  mind,  a  kinship  springs  up,  and  we  find  that  they 
are  not  only  real  things,  but  as  forces,  cognate ;  and 
presently  the  deduction  comes  that  there  is  but  one 
force  which  arrested  becomes  on  occasion  all  other 
forces.  Now  in  the  substantial  correspondences 
adduced  above,  there  is  also  experience,  though  a  re- 
vealed experience, — revealed  for  the  sufficient  reason 
that  it  could  not  have  been  attained  without  revela- 
tion; a  revealed  zoologia  and  zoonomia.  And 
although  at  first  no  man  could  divine  that  a  lion  in 
the  Word  is  correlate  with  the  mighty  power  of  truth 
from  good  (or  the  opposite),  and  a  lamb,  with  the 
good  of  innocence,  and  that  the  arrest  of  these 
qualities  out  of  man  presents  those  forms  as  its  ne- 
cessities, yet  when  the  subject  is  sufficiently  received 
to  be  studied,  it  is  found  that  the  higher  and  the 
lower  terms  of  the  lives,  human  and  animal,  answer 
to  each  other  more  self-evidently  than  motion  to 

heat,  or  heat  to  light. 

The  argument  means  to  imply  that  because  of  the 
novelty  of  the  thought  that  organic  and  inorganic 
creations  are  all  arrests  of  force  and  correlates  of 
each  other,  the  thought  cannot  be  rejected,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  the  same  thought  as  that  which  discovers  the 
correlation  of  natural  forces.  Forms,  wherever  they 
be,  are  the  houses  of  indwelling  forces;  and  if  force 
correlates  with  force,  the  many  mansions  which  it 
inhabits  do  themselves  correlate  also.  Thus  then 
forms,  full  of  influx  and  emitting  influx,  strike  their 
downward  Hmit,  and  produce  the  forms  next  below 
them,  which  are  their  proximate  correspondences. 


JUDGMENT  B  V  CORRESPONDENCES,        3 2 1 


If   •   I 


LXXXV. 


JUDGMENT   BY    CORRESPONDENCES. 

The  subject  of  correspondences  is  Word-embracing 
and  world-embracing.  It  links  the  perceptive  mind 
of  the  earliest  people,  the  Adamic  Church,  to  modern 
science,  in  the  doctrine  of  correlation.  It  runs  from 
Genesis  to  the  Apocalypse,  and  combines  the  Word 
into  one  book,  and  brings  its  ages  under  one  inspira- 
tion. It  unites  heaven  and  earth,  and  in  the  Word  is 
the  grove  and  trysting-place  of  the  communion  of 
souls.  It  attests  creation  as  coming  down  from  one 
source.  It  opens  innumerable  universes  to  science; 
each  larger,  and  nearer  to  human  love,  than  the 
whole  field  of  past  knowledge.  It  is  the  sea  into 
which  all  the  little  rivers  of  human  genius  run.  It 
is  the  drama  and  scenery  of  Divine  Providence  in 
the  worlds.  It  is  awfulness  of  sublimity  and  beauty; 
harmony  to  the  landscape-end  for  the  homes  of 
heaven;  justice  and  judgment  from  the  ground  up- 
wards to  injustice  and  to  evil.  It  builds  the  out- 
ward heavens  from  heavens  within  the  man;  and  the 
outward  hells  from  within  likewise.  It  is  the  realm 
of  consequences,  stronger  than  unauthenticated  fate. 
In  short,  it  is  creation  as  a  discourse  on  the  text, 
''Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  others  should  do 
unto  you;"  and  it  implies  that  every  form  is  divinely 
appointed  to  fit  the  case  of  men;  to  carry  forth  the 
delights  of  heaven,  or  to  bring  back  the  retributions 
of  wickedness. 

Correspondence  also  enters  the  realm  of  circum- 
stances in  the  spiritual  world;  and  is  now  invading 
the  same  realm  in  the  natural  world.     It  apportions 


3  2  2       JUDGMENT  B  V  CORRESPONDENCES. 

the  lot  of  all  mankind  at  last.      It  has  riches  and 
poverty,  dignity  and  dishonour,  power  and  weakness, 
in  its  grasp.     In  the  spiritual  world,  it  is  history. 
In  the  natural  world,  where  evil   often   seems  to 
triumph,  it  is  not  obviously  so.     The  case  can  there- 
fore better  be  illustrated   from  the  spiritual  side, 
especially  as  it  shines  down  thence  completely  into 
common  sense.     Let  the  possession  of  wealth  and 
honours   be   an   instance.      These   are   apportioned 
exactly  according  to  the  use  made  of  them ;  they  be- 
long to  no  man  and  to  no  angel :  any  proprietor  may 
do  what  he  likes  with  his  own;  but  then  nothing  is 
his  own  excepting  his  bare  selfhood  which  cannot  be 
administered  in  heaven ;  for  heaven  consists  in  the 
administration  not  of  natures  but  of  the  divine  gifts. 
The  princes  and  dukes  of  heaven  have  wealth  and 
power,  and  splendour  of  edifices,  but  it  is  because 
their  titles  and  title-deeds  are  within  them ;  in  a  life 
of  correspondences  no  mean  soul  can  have   much 
more  than  the  value  of  himself:  more  he  has  because 
of  the  divine  mercy.     The  great  there  are  only  con- 
scious channels  of  administration.     They  are  not  the 
proprietors  but  the  prime  ministers  of  the  govern- 
ment of  their  revenues.     Their  mental  genius  and  its 
powers  are  not  for  their  own  glory  or  supereminence, 
but  for  service :  if  appropriated  to  self,  their  minds 
collapse  for  that  state,  and  their  inspiration  ends. 
These  are  obvious  heavenly  conditions,  and  apply  to 
all  the  gifts  of  the  Lord.     In  heaven  there  are  no 
possible  great  purses  for  self-enjoyment;  no  bankers 
that  can  hold  a  balance  for  the  selfhood ;  no  securi- 
ties ;  no  states  ruled  for  imperial,  or  national  glory ; 
no  books  written  for  fame;  no  martyrs  for  crowns; 
no  actors  for  applause;  no  newspapers  for  a  public; 
no  privileges  but  those  of  superior  use  from  higher 


JUDGMENT  B  Y  CORRESPONDENCES        323 

disinterestedness :  no  measure  of  life  but  the  Lord  s 

approbation  within  the  man.     And  now  it  is  to  be 

borne  in  mind,  that  this,  which  is  but  plain  if  not 

obvious  good  sense,  stands  also  revealed  to  experience 

in  Swedenborgs  writings  of  the  New  Jerusalem. 

He  knew  as  familiar  acquaintances   the  rich  and 

the  poor  in  heaven,  and  saw  that  the  wealth  and  the 

poverty  all  through  is  a  spiritual  fact  first,  and  then 

an  external  necessity.     He  knew  there  that  a  prince 

not  princely  in  the  Lord  is  an  impossibility,  and  that 

a  millionaire  centred  in  his  own  gold  can  have  no 

gold,  because  gold  corresponds  to  the  good  of  love. 

He    also    witnessed   the    Last    Judgment,   which 

brought  this  heaven  of  things  close  down  as  a  plane 

of  induction  of  power  to  the  earth.     And  because 

this   coming   down,  this   descent,  was   and   is   the 

descent  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  he  showed  in  and 

from  the  Word  that  a  divine  correspondence  is  at 

work,  and  that  the  same  kingdom  is  impending  here, 

and  will  be  realized. 

It  is  but  a  correlation  of  forces.   The  new  heavens, 
the  Lord  within  expanding  them,  arrested  by  the 
resistent  plane  of  the  dominions  and  riches  of  the 
earth,  reappear  in  a  new  mind  among  men  urgent  for 
the   deeds   and   sacrifices    of    regenerative   natural 
righteousness.     The  law  first  in  time  is.  Property. 
No  man  can  throw  his  selfhood — his  proprium — to 
the  winds  without  becoming  nobody.     And  with  his 
inalienable    selfhood    follow    his    possessions    and 
powers,  material  and  mental;  his  genius,  his  castle, 
his  income,  and  his  influence.     These  are  the  bur- 
dens he  has  to  bear  to  the  end  of  his  day's  work,  and 
the  government  he  is  bound  to  administer.     They 
will  all  require  to  be  spent  wisely  on  the  service  of 
others;  his  private  income,  voted  from  time  to  time 


It. 


I 


ill 


ir; 


* 


3 24       JUDGMENT  B  V  CORRESPONDENCES. 

by  his  conscience,  being  what  is  needed  by  himself 
as  the  vessel  of  his  divine  use;  truly  an  honourable 
vessel  deserving   of  honour;    a  loving,   worthy  of 
delight;  a  bountiful  vessel,  capacious  for  pleasure;  a 
beautiful  vessel,  fit  to  be  centred  in  beautiful  places. 
But  the  vessel,  in  the  wisdom  and  intelligence  of  a 
gifted   conscience,   will   take   care   of  itself      The 
major  thing  is,  the  correspondence  with  heavenly 
doings,   the   public   humane    administration.      The 
commonwealth  is  a  great  idea;  the  service  of  the 
wealth  of  each  for  all,  and   of  all   for  each;    the 
solidarity   of  the   nation   and   people.      The    New 
Jerusalem  correlates  with  this,  but  is  more  than  this; 
the  national  selfhood  is  traversed  by  it  from  above ; 
and  the  Lord  descends  into  the  wealth  and  power  of 
men,  and  claims  them.    These  are  to  be  administered 
for  men,  but  for  God  in  men.      The  idea  of  the 
commonwealth  is  changed  as  a  belonging  into  the 
spirit  of  the  new   proprietor,  into  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  Godwealth.     Here  again  is  a  new  com- 
incy  down,  and  a  new  channel  of  administration. 

It  will  not  long  be  possible  in  this  nation  for 
power  and  wealth  to  stand  indifferent  to  the  divine 
claims  arising  not  of  desert  but  of  duty  from  weak- 
ness and  poverty.     It  will  not  be  maintainable  as  a 
fact  that  the  rich  and  the  poor  have  no  relations  but 
those  of  service  and  wages.     The  external  circum- 
stances of  the  poorer  classes  are  the  proper  dukedom 
of  the  rich.     The  duke's  drawing-room  and  picture 
gallery   is  the  measure  of  what  he  thinks  in  his 
present  conscience  a  man  ought  to  have.     It  is  an 
expressed    word    which  judges   his  dukeship   with 
regard  to  all  inhabitation  in  which  he  is  concerned. 
At  least  it  imports  decency  and  comfort  in  all  houses. 
As  the  New  Jerusalem  life  comes  more  and  more  to 


JUDGMENT  B  V  CORRESPONDENCES,        325 

confront  him  with  his  dominions,  viz.,  the  homes  of 
the  poor,  correspondence  must  work  upon  him,  and 
universal  rebuilding  be  the  consequence.     It  is  not 
his  business  to  infringe  the  freedom  of  the  poor,  to 
police   their   habits,    to   vaccinate   them,   or    apply 
theories  to  their  bodies  and  lives;  every  poor  man 
will  be  increasingly  a  freeman  as  time  rolls  on.     But 
being  a  duke  or  leader,  a   great   administrator  of 
wealth,  it  is  his  business  in  his  domain  to  provide 
habitations  into  which  decency  can  enter,  and  where 
it  can  have  a  home;  into  which  family  life  can  enter, 
and  where  clean  love  can  Hve,  and  clean  children  can 
be  reared.     Into  which  vice  and  indecency  also  can 
enter,  and   if  they  are  adventitious,  be  incited  to 
reform;  if  they  are  radical  and  inveterate,  be  voided 
out  of  society,  and  into  bonds,  or  deserts,  by  swift 
excretion  and  elimination.      The  correlation  of  the 
new  heavens,  in  which  righteousness  dwells  in  its 
city,  four  square,  with  the  new  earth,  which  is  the 
newly  awakened  conscience,  will  exact  this  first  of 
all  for  this  great  town  of  London,  on  which,  in  the 
spiritual   world,   the    Last   Judgment   first   set   its 
executive   mark.      Dumb   dog  London,   now   vivi- 
sected in  its  lowest  parts  by  the  landlordism  of  the 
love  of  this  world,  its  gauds  and  pleasures,  will  have 
to  be  regarded  as  a  living  soul,  and  its  whole  body 
treated  accordingly.     And  this  must  be  done  first 
by  its  dukes,  not  by  its  communes.     Swedenborg,  in 
speaking   of  the    English   in   the   spiritual    world, 
notices  as  one  of  their  ''faculties  of  recovery,"  that 
they  listen  to  those  who  are  over  them,  who  are  in 
fact  their  higher  classes.     This  weighs  as  a  responsi- 
bility upon  wealth  and  power,  without  due  adminis- 
tration of  which  responsibility  the  commune  cannot 
be  properly  invaded  by  the  aristoi.     The  commune 


*i\ 


|.| 


326     TRANSFORMATION <&*  TRANSFIG URA TION. 

can  do  nothing  of  itself;  it  is  general  and  proto- 
plastic; clay  requiring  a  potter.  *'Men  called  and 
chosen  and  faithful,"  real  dukes,  who  can  serve  with 
the  singleness  of  wisdom  which  we  want,  must  step 
forth  now  to  enact  the  correspondence  between  the 
city  above,  and  the  city  below  into  which  the 
difficult  descent  is  to  be  made. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  show  that  correspon- 
dence, not  only  as  a  science,  but  as  a  duty,  reigns 
through  all  that  is  good  and  true  in  either  world ; 
that  it  builds  the  spiritual  world  in  its  kingdoms  and 
circumstances,  in  the  love  that  inspires  and  consti- 
tutes the  freedom  of  the  heavens,  and  in  the  justice 
that  closes  in  the  prisons  of  the  hells.  Also  that  its 
pressure  through  the  two  organs,  namely,  human 
love,  and  human  justice,  is  upon  society,  for  conser- 
vation, reconstruction,  repression,  and  elimination. 
And  that  it  comes  down  from  a  new  order  of  things 
already  instituted  above ;  and  which,  with  the  truths 
of  correspondence  from  the  earliest  time,  has  been 
made  known  to  mankind  by  the  writings  of  Sweden- 


borg. 


LXXXVI. 


TRANSFORMATION   AND    TRANSFIGURATION. 

Passing  from  the  correspondence  of  higher  with 
lower  states,  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  up- 
ward ladder  of  correspondence,  far  more  difficult  to 
see  than  the  lower  ladder.  The  lower  ladder  is 
transformation.  The  wave  of  the  higher  kingdom 
of  life  which  is  love,  striking  a  prepared  lower  plane, 
which  is  already  organific  or  ovate  to  receive  the 
loved  vibration,  and  to  propagate  it,  rises  up  there 


TRANSFORMATION 6-  TRANSFIG URATION.     327 

in  another  form;  the  innocence  within  the  angel, 
kindled  by  the  divine  heat  and  light,  becomes  not 
only  living  but  heavenly  innocence;  and  lower  down, 
flocks  of  sheep  and  lambs  with  a  world  of  their  pas- 
ture, a  new  love  and  light  of  life,  assume  visible 
being,  as  it  were  spontaneous  sculptures  of  life  from 
the  quarry  of  the  lower  plane.     Innocent  pairs  of 
men  and  women  on  one  side  of  the  line  equate  in  the 
divine  algebra  with  flocks  of  sheep,  lower  forms  of 
innocence  on  the  other.     Transformation  is  eflTected, 
and  is  exactly  perpetual.     But  the  divine  life  in  im- 
mediate correspondence  exceeds  this  law,  and  is  not 
transformation,   but  transfiguration.      It  is   indeed 
plenary  correspondence,  but  the  thing  attained  is  so 
much  more  than  its  ground,  such  a  mere  bounty  of 
mercy,  that  it  cannot  be  seen  or  predicted  or  at  first 
thought  of  from  the  lower  plane.     The  eyes  must  be 
transfigured  to  follow  it.     The  cardinal  instances  of 
this  are  presented  in  the  Lord  s  transfiguration  and 
ascension.     When  the  disciples  went  up  the  mount 
with  Him,— the  mount  is  a  holy  induction  of  state  in 
which  He  reigned  over  their  selfhoods  for  a  time, 
and   consequently  they  saw  with  new  eyes,— His 
countenance  shone  as  the  sun,  and  His  raiment  was 
white  as  the  light.     They  could  not  know  from  their 
poor  natures  what  He  is  like  when  He  reveals  Him- 
self as  Himself.     By  no  passage  of  reason  could 
they  believe  that  it  was  He,  until  He  took  them  up 
the  mount.     And  yet  it  was  an  exhibited  correspon- 
dence with  His  bent  and  bowed  humanity  divinely 
infilled.    Each  of  His  precepts,  lived  in  His  life ;  each 
line  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount ;  that  common  com- 
mandment, ''  Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  others 
should  do  unto  you  ;"  seen  in  struggle  on  the  plain  of 
the  day  s  work,  is  a  mere  morality  of  the  conscience. 


!• 


iJ 


ir 


328      TRANSFORMATION &-  TRANSFIGURATION 

a  bowed  man  and  woman  of  sorrows ;  but  afterwards 
on  the  mount  of  the  revealed  love  which  follows  the 
work,  is  crowned   with  the  aureole  of  the  spiritual 
sun,  shines  in  its  strength,  and  has  new  eyes  for 
the  Creator  and  Redeemer.     Also  forecasts  a  new 
time  and  world  of  uprightness,  and  enters  upon  its 
vision;  or  sees  Moses  and  Elias,  the  law  and  the 
prophets,  conversing  with  the  Lord.     As  it  is  with 
''  the  mountain  of  the  transfiguration,"  so  also  is  it 
with  "  the  greater  mountain  of  the  ascension."     But 
herein  He  was  parted  from  the  disciples,  and  received 
up  into  heaven.     Representatively  He  quitted  the 
plane  of  nature  and  open  perception,  and  though 
Lord  of  heaven  and  earth  now,  yet  he  crowned  the 
freedom  of  man  by  becoming  invisible   except   to 
faith,  unfelt  save  by  love,  and  unauthoritative  save 
for  awakened  conscience.      No  natural  man  could 
have  thought  that  the  Saviour  who  grasped  him, 
and  said.  Fear  not,  it  is  I  !  should  seem  to  leave 
him,  and  be  parted  from  him,  and  become  of  His 
own  divine  freewill,  only  a  memory  and  an  influence : 
that  so  the  spirit  might  com^,  and  under  it  man 
decide  freely  upon  his  own  fortunes.     And  yet  here 
there  is  strict  correspondence  with  all  that  the  Lord's 
life  was  hitherto,  and  with  tke  fact  that  His  mercy 
is  over  all  His  works.     His  invisibility  is  the  last 
transfiguration  of  redeeming  love  and  power.    "Verily 
thou  art  a  God  that  hidest  thyself,  0  God  of  Israel, 
the  Saviour."     In  taking  the  throne  of  heaven,  He 
confirmed  by  His  own  act  and  deed  the  freedom  of 
mankind  to  do  well,  or  ill ;  and  set  His  seal  on  the 
forehead  of  the  whole  earth  with  its  nations  and 
peoples,  to  the  perpetual  progress  of  civil  and  reli- 
gious and  personal  liberty,  the  new  magna  charta 
of  empire,  of  which  His  ascension  is  the  beginning. 


TRANSFORMATION &>  TRANSFIGURATION      329 

As  with  the  Lord,  so  with  the  Word ;  its  spiritual 
sense  is  no  transformation  of  the  letter,  but  a  trans- 
figuration; it  cannot  be  divined  from  the  letter,  but 
the  knowledge  of  it  comes  from  above.  When  it  is 
revealed,  it  is  seen  to  correspond  to  the  letter,  and 
to  be  correlate  with  it;  the  bridge  of  correspondence 
conjoins  the  two  senses.  And  ultimately  the  ex- 
ternal sense  or  letter  becomes  to  the  rational  mind 
so  penetrated  by  the  flowing  of  the  internal  sense, 
that  it  also  is  transfigured,  and  the  spiritual  sense  is 
visible  in  it.  Such  is  the  force  of  the  fact  of  corre- 
spondence with  the  divine  influx  of  life  inherent  in  it, 
that  it  is  perpetually  insinuating  souls  into  things, 
being  in  short  the  ensouling  principle  of  all  bodies 
and  forms;  the  reason  of  the  cohabitation  of  soul  and 
body,  spirit  and  letter. 

The  like  case  holds  with  men  and  women  after 
death;  they  are  the  same  men  and  women,  the  same 
characteristic  people ;  in  themselves  transformed,  but 
if  they  become  angels,  transfigured  also.  The  natural 
mind  itself  with  its  modes  and  perceptions,  its 
'^ senses  and  categories  and  pure  intuitions"  and 
what  you  will,  has  been  put  aside,  and  a  mind  incon- 
ceivable to  man  in  mere  nature,  is  now  the  only 
external  plane  of  perception.  No  man  would  know 
his  own  internal  man  after  this  putting  off"  if  he  saw 
him  presented  in  this  world;  and  yet  he  corresponds 
to  the  whole  character  of  the  outer  man;  not  to  the 
lineaments  of  a  moment,  but  to  the  purposed  ways 
of  the  lifetime.  A  further  diflBculty  of  discerning 
by  natural  light  the  correspondences  of  transfigura- 
tion, is,  that  when  the  spiritual  man  is  opened  to  the 
Lord,  and  receives  Him,  he  is  beyond  himself,  the 
divine  beauty  endows  him,  and  from  no  spiritual 
state  of  his  own  could  he  know  himself  as  he  then  is. 


•1 


1 


330     TRANSFORMA  TION  d^•  TRANSFIG  URA  TION. 


The  like  holds  also  with  regard  to  evil  and 
opposite  states.  Evil  men  in  their  hells  are  spiritual, 
mental  and  bodily  monsters  according  to  their  reign- 
ing love  of  wickedness.  On  earth,  they  would  not 
know  themselves  if  their  inner  monstrosity  were  re- 
vealed in  its  shape.  They  could  not  conceive  their 
own  consequences.  In  the  hells,  they  do  not  seem 
monstrous  to  themselves,  because  evil  does  not  seem 
monstrous  to  them  but  delightful,  but  if  the  light  of 
heaven,  the  divine  truth,  enters,  they  know  their 
enormities  of  form.  Swedenborg  saw  that  this  light 
is  mercifully  not  let  in  upon  them,  in  order  that  they 
may  still  be  seemly  to  each  other,  and  able  to 
associate;  when  yet  they  are  horrible  in  the  upper 
reality.  They  are  exact  deformities  equated  to  the 
whole  organic  nature  of  the  indulgence  of  self  at  the 
expense  of  heaven  and  the  neighbour.  They  are  not 
however  transfigurations  in  an  evil  sense;  because 
they  are  never  carried  beyond  themselves;  but 
carried  out  in  and  into  themselves;  which  makes 
them  monsters. 

There  is  no  image  of  transfiguration  in  nature 
except  in  the  regeneration  of  men,  which  however 
would  and  will  transfigure  nature.  The  Lord  was 
not  evolved  from  the  son  of  Mary,  but  Jehovah,  His 
soul,  by  combats  against  evil,  and  conquest  over  evil 
in  a  daily  life,  transfigured  the  first  humanity  until 
the  natural  became  the  Divine  Humanity.  The 
spiritual  sense  of  the  Word  is  not  evolved  from  be- 
low from  the  letter,  but  it  is  revealed  down  into  the 
letter,  and  illuminates  it.  The  spiritual  man  is  not 
the  sublimation  of  the  natural  man,  but  his  subjuga- 
tion and  regeneration.  The  senses  are  not  the 
creators  of  the  mind,  but  the  mind  comes  down  into 
their  planes,  and  there  feeds  and  infils  its  own  grow- 


THE  LA  WS  OF  NATURE. 


331 


ing  natural  organizations.  Therefore  there  is  no 
upward  ladder  of  correspondences  in  nature  alone, 
but  only  analogies,  of  all  things  with  each  other,  and 
of  beasts  with  men,  and  so  forth.  But  creation  of 
form  from  form  is  not  discernible  here;  and  the  only 
evolution  is  of  things  themselves,  as  of  stem  from 
root,  and  leaf  from  branch,  and  flower  and  fruit 
in  their  order.  The  evolution  is  always  by  cor- 
respondences, marital  and  conjugial  facts  and  acts, 
and  not  from  matrices  alone.  The  nature  of  ma- 
terialists is  a  lone  woman,  the  widow  of  a  god,  and 
as  such  has  no  children,  but  only  stock,  not  to  be 
accounted  for  by  matter. 


h 


LXXXVII. 

THE   LAWS   OF    NATURE   AND    THE    KINGDOM    OF   GOD. 

The  regeneration  of  men  in  this  world,  introduc- 
ing their  minds  into  harmony  with  the  ends  of  the 
creation,  will  however,  as  said  above,  produce  the 
spiritual  fact  of  correspondence  here  also.  When 
the  flow  of  divine  ends  is  received  by  the  freewill 
unperverted,  and  in  order,  the  mind  of  man  will 
consciously  co-administer  with  God,  the  powers  of 
creation.  There  are  two  things  for  the  natural 
world;  the  laws  of  nature  in  their  immeasurable 
fixity, — the  reign  of  law;  the  human  will  having 
nothing  to  do  with  these  laws  but  to  obey  them ;  for 
the  selfhood  of  man  is  mercifully  their  slave.  The 
other  thing  is  the  reign  of  God  in  man.  The  con- 
sequences of  this  on  nature  are  seen  in  the  Lord  s 
life  on  earth.  There  is  nothing  miraculous  in  the 
maker  of  suns  and  solar  systems,  and  of  men,  women 


f   'I 


i    A 


332 


THE  LA  WS  OF  NATURE 


and  children,  raising  the  dead,  multiplying  the  loaves 
and  fishes,  walking  upon  the  sea,  rising  from  the 
dead,  and  ascending  into  heaven;  and  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  is  that  maker.  Nature,  the  breath  of 
His  lips  from  the  first,  obeys  His  thoughts,  because 
it  is  His  outspeech.  His  life  shows  what  will  be 
when  collective  man  corresponds  to  Him,  and  carries 
human  correspondences  down  into  nature. 

This  is  expressed  where  it  is  said  of  the  New  Jeru- 
salem that  it  has  *'no  need  of  the  sun  neither  of 
the  moon  to  shine  in  it,  for  the  glory  of  God  does 
lighten  it,  and  the  Lamb  is  the  lamp  thereof."     The 
sun  in  a  good  sense  is  the  divine  love;  but  here,  as 
the  New  Jerusalem  does  not  need  the  sun,  self-love 
is  tlie  opposed  meaning.    Now  almost  all  the  world's 
work  at  present  is  carried  on  by  self-love;  were  it 
taken  away,  the  industries  of  mankind  would  fall  flat, 
and  the  arms  of  the  toiling  millions  be  motiveless. 
For  self-love  is  the  law  of  human  nature.    The  moon, 
the  reflective  mental  organ  and  faculty,  is  intelligence 
from  self,  intelligentia  ex  se,  which  intelligently  carries 
out  the  good  and  useful  works  compulsorily  done 
for  the  maintenance  and  in  the  service  of  the  self- 
hood.    These  are  the  faculties,  prime  movers  in  the 
present  world,  which  the  world  of  regeneration  that 
comes  down  from  above,  will  not  need.    The  laws  of 
nature  will  then  be  voted  by  senates  of  life  above 
nature,  not  by  nature.     Already  they  correspond  to 
the  states  of  regeneration.     As  this  is  effected,  they 
will    be    transfigured;    the    divine   sun,    which   is 
righteousness,  will  reign  over  the  natural  sun,  which 
is  selfhood,  and  carry  it  out  to  conclusions  miraculous 
to  selfhood,  but  corollaries  of  mans  willing  con- 
junction with  the  Lord. 

These  things  are  hard  to  be  imagined,  because  the 


ANI?  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD,  333 

human  faculties  are  deformed  by  the  service  of  self- 
ishness,  and  their  intellect  and  imagination  are  not 
commensurate  with  the  ends  of  nature.  Creation  is 
not  like  their  way  of  doing  things.  Hence  the  cur- 
rent  reasons,  imaginations,  and  feelings  of  men  are 
not  capable  for  the  theoretical  sciences,  because  the 
motives  behind  are  alien  to  God's  motives.  The 
merchant  does  not  make  his  business  for  reasons  cor- 
relate  with  the  sea,  the  land,  and  the  crops.  The 
philosopher  does  not  contrive  his  theory  that  God 
may  flow  through  it  for  human  uses,  that  the  Word 
may  be  heard  sounding  through  the  works.  The 
scientist  does  not  explore  nature  that  the  spiritual 
laws  from  which  it  emanates  may  be  revealed  to  the 
lowest  honest  mind  in  their  ultimate  forms  on  earth 
The  mind  moves  forth  for  power  and  profit  and  calory 
and  for  these  things  nature  does  not  move.  So  that 
her  hidden  language,  which  is  the  Word,  is  not  heard 
still  less  understood.  Men  do  indeed  love  truth  very 
much,  but  for  themselves,  not  for  the  good  of  truth 
This  is  the  public  state,  and  this  is  the  reason  of 
materialism  and  atheism,  and  these  are  the  reasons 
of  non-admission  within  the  doors  of  nature;  and  of 
burglarious  attempts  to  enter  her  castles  of  truth  by 
lawless  digging  and  horrid  forms  of  life-breakino- 

In  the  future,  the  sects  will  be  tallied  off*  by  their 
capacity,  from  their  several  theological  ideas,  to  open 
the  book  of  nature.  The  idea  entertained  of  God  is 
the  foundation  life  of  the  human  mind.  It  is  not  a 
faculty,  but  an  act  of  reception  of  the  Divine  Person 
All  heathen  mythological  ideas,  excepting  in  so  far 
as  they  are  now  interpretable  by  the  science  of  cor- 
respondences, have  already  been  tried  upon  man  and 
nature,  and  their  keys  will  not  fit  the  lock  The 
mythologies  of  the  old  Christian  Church  are  separate 


*i 


H 


334 


THE  LA  WS  OF  NATURE 


from  the  nature  of  things,  and  their  professors  stand 
aloof,  and  leave  nature  to  the  unbelievers.  Theism 
has  no  key  at  all,  having  no  ideas,  but  only  a  reverent 
creed :  it  is  a  hypothesis  of  the  unknown  God ;  or 
rather  was  such  in  the  days  of  Socrates  :  it  is  other 
than  that  now,  it  is  a  neglect  and  denial  of  the  known 
because  revealed  God.  It  cannot  make  God  out  of 
nature  or  human  nature,  because  as  an  apprehensible 
Person  He  is  not  in  either.  It  has  no  mind  adequate 
to  ''  constructing  God,"  and  if  logic  were  not  merci- 
fully overruled  by  the  good  affections  of  the  heart, 
atheism  would  be  its  victor.  Obviously,  the  theory 
of  the  unknown  cannot  correlate  with  the  theory  of 
the  known,  which  is  nature ;  in  other  words,  theism 
has  no  motive  power  to  enable  it  to  enter  into  and 
ensoul  science.  Jupiter  and  Odin  and  Brahma  fit 
to  certain  parts  of  nature  and  human  nature, — not 
extensive  parts,  but  real  ones  ;  but  theism  as  a  theory 
floats,  and  fits  to  nothing,  and  is  so  poor  and  impro- 
bable in  itself,  that  there  can  be  in  it  none  of  the 
courage  to  enable  it  to  make  marriage  proposals  to 
nature.  Moreover,  the  unsearchable  One,  in  refus- 
ing to  reveal  Himself  to  His  children,  would  consti- 
tute ignorant  guessing,  and  not  science,  into  the  final 
organon  of  the  human  faculties.  There  is  now  no 
natural  light  in  theism. 

Into  this  arena  of  difficulty  the  New  Church  can 
and  does  enter,  and  the  Word  of  God,  unlocked  in  its 
spiritual  sense  by  the  science  of  correspondences,  and 
the  Lord  revealed  in  His  divine  humanity,  stand  as 
the  supreme  theory  of  man  and  nature.  The  case  being 
this,  that  God  is  known,  and  can  in  the  regeneration 
of  mankind  be  ever  more  and  more  known ;  and 
nature  is  known,  and  by  honest  impartial  exploration 
can  be  ever  more  and  more  known ;  and  the  spiritual 


AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD,  335 

world,  the  process  of  God  to  the  ultimates  of  nature, 
IS  also  known;  and  the  harmonizing  of  these  three 
gifts  of  knowledge  is  the  entry  of  the  integral  human 
faculties  upon  the  knowledge  of  creation.  As  a 
position  and  a  new  capacity,  this  result  is  due  to 
the  rational  revelations  made  in  the  writings  of 
Swedenborg. 

The  existing  sciences  are  a  preparation  in  Provi- 
dence  for  the  crowning  truth  of  the  Divine  humanity, 
upon  which  the  coherent  light  of  the  mind  depends! 
For  whoever  works  them,  atheist,  theist,  or  Chris- 
tian, their  order  is  fated  to  culminate  in  man.    What- 
ever does  not  begin  from  and  end  in  his  visible  per- 
son is  imaginary.     In  tracing  nature  through  all 
developments  up  to  man,  the  classification  aims  at 
humanity  perforce.    Even  gorillalogy  is  an  arrow  on 
the  bowstring  of  necessity  shot  for  this  mark.     The 
beginning  is  Jehovah  creating ;  He  is  the  divine  man. 
Permeating  all.  His  image,  man,  is  His  final  natural 
work.     The  perpetuity  of  his  image  is  His  care. 
Unstable  through  evil.  He  renders  it  stable  by  taking 
it  upon  Hinaself,  and  redeeming  as  well  as  creating 
it.    The  chain  of  order  is  complete  and  invulnerable. 
The   divine  river  of  truth  mounts  as  high  as  its 
source,  and  runs  from  God  to  God.    The  deduction  is, 
that  by  these  illuminating  doctrines  of  truth,  nature 
is  permeable  from  one  end  to  the  other;  her  final 
causes  circulate  in  the  arteries  and  veins  of  science ; 
humanity  is  all  in  all  in  her  births.    Her  Maker  is  a 
man ;  her  Eedeemer  is  a  man ;  all  who  die  out  of 
her  into  a  higher  or  a  lower  life,  are  men  still ;  all 
angels  and  all  devils   have  been   men;   and   thus 
wherever  science  looks  she  discerns,  besides  her  own 
special  objects,  human  qualities  meant,  and  human 
uses  intended. 


336  E  VIL  FORMS  AND  E  VENTS. 


LXXXVIII. 

EVIL   FORMS   AND    EVENTS. 

Nature  is  as  full  of  evil  forms  as  the  human  mind, 
and  these  correspond  to  perversions  in  human  nature. 
They   are   created   by   God    through    man   in   the 
spiritual  world,  and  to  man  in  tlie  natural  world. 
They  confront  his  evils  in  both  cases.      They  are 
images   and   likenesses   of  his   humours,   acts,   and 
intentions.     On  this  account  it  is  difficult,  perhaps 
impossible,  for  any  internal  artist  to  avoid  trans- 
planting humanity  into  animal  forms  from  his  pencil. 
It   may   seem   a   contradiction   if  evil  forms  were 
extant  on  earth  before  the  human  race.     But  God, 
who  gave  freewill,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  created 
man,  knew  the  issues  of  it.     He  knew  that  man 
would  fall  into  self,  and  separate  himself  from  God. 
Creation  was  prepared  for  the  event  as  if  it  had 
already  happened ;  and  the  earth  deflected  to  corre- 
spond to,  and  justly  to  house,  the  humanity  that 
would  be.     Swedenborg  proclaims  the  same  of  the 
divine  law.     Moses  broke  the  first  tables  of  the  law, 
and  other  tables  were  given;  and  it  was  represented 
thereby  that  the  divine  law  in  its  pure  expression 
could  not  be  given  to  the  Jewish  race;  but  a  divine 
accommodation  correlated  to  their  state;  in  which 
Jehovah  appeared  clothed  in  the  evil  passions  com- 
prehensible to  the  people;  but  with  righteousness 
and  judgment  prevailing;  the  appearances  hiding  for 
a  divine  statesmanship  the  light  and  love  within. 
And  so  with  the  world,  and  the  pestilent  part  of  its 
inhabitants.     It  stands  ready  for  the  foreseen  men 
who  will  work  upon  it.     And  it  is  a  justice,  and  a 


E  VIL  FORMS  AND  E  VENTS. 


337 


lesson,  and  an  incitement  to  industry  against  evil;  a 
field  for  moral  and  spiritual  science,  and  a  revelation 
in  every  nature  of  the  forms  of  heaven,  and  the 
shapes  of  hell. 

Men  have  thought,  and  the  number  of  such  is 
increasing,  that  they  see  over  the  head  of  nature,  and 
that  her  work  could  be  corrected  and  improved. 
"Well,  so  it  could  if  it  were  her  work.  But  if  the 
aberrations  of  spiritual  and  natural  evil  are  necessarily 
represented  in  it,  then  they  count  for  something  in 
the  universe,  and  how  much  they  account  for  no 
material  thought  can  tell.  They  may  account  for 
large  events  and  catastrophes  of  geology;  for  deserts 
and  poisonous  flies;  for  inclemency,  inhospitality,  and 
as  it  were  rascality  in  nature.  If  there  are  infernal 
universes,  immense  empires  of  evil,  their  constant 
working  upon  the  system  of  the  world,  will  tend  by 
severe  laws  of  correspondence  to  break  the  first 
tables  of  the  laws  of  nature,  and  to  introduce  second 
tables  full  of  despotism,  contest  and  contradiction. 
The  science  here  must  come  from  the  admission 
of  evil  as  causal  and  final,  which  makes  ''all  creation 
groan  and  travail ;"  and  the  cure,  from  the  regenera- 
tion and  elevation  of  the  determinant  middle  cause, 
man. 

Doubtless  the  Word  itself  is  in  the  same  correla- 
tion, and  this,  in  these  times,  from  want  of  modest 
consideration,  has  been  the  pretext  for  a  great  deal 
of  infidelity  and  rejection  of  Scripture.  Looked  at 
by  naturalism,  the  imperfections  of  the  letter,  exactly 
coincident  as  they  are  with  the  capacities  of  human 
nature,  have  been  used  as  arguments  against  its 
divinity.  This  they  would  be  were  it  not  that  it  is 
the  internal  or  spiritual  sense  by  which  it  is  provided 
that  such  a  correspondent  letter  should  be  brought  to 


t  J 


338 


THE  MARCH  OF  ENDS. 


mankind.  It  had  to  be  written  to  the  Jewish  mind, 
and  to  the  early  Christian  mind.  Its  letter  is  its 
accommodation;  its  spiritual  sense  is  its  complete 
and  final  justification.  Written  otherwise  at  first,  it 
would  have  been  written  to  nobody.  It  has  served 
its  divine  purposes  for  thousands  of  yeq^rs;  and  now, 
when  it  would  have  perished  as  a  mere  letter,  its 
indwelling  soul  is  declared  for  the  New  Jerusalem, 
and  it  Uves  for  the  whole  mind  as  the  light  of  men. 

As  we  have  said  in  former  pages,  the  letter  has 

been  led  to  the  slaughter,  and  vivisected,  and  its 

laws  brought  under  the  canons  of  naturalism.     It 

will  easily  recover  this  in  the  New  Church.     Nay 

more,  as  the  spiritual  sense  is  the  soul  of  the  letter, 

and  as  the  soul  builds  the  body,  any  imperfections 

in  the  outward  form  or  transmission  of  the  letter, 

will  be  corrected  from  the  spiritual  side  as  its  light 

is  more  powerfully  received;  the  lamp  within  will 

show  the    outward  organism;    and   any  parts   not 

illuminated,   will    be   ultimately   put   aside.      The 

living  body  repels  criticism,  and  asserts  for  itself  life. 

The  Word  is  a  divine  manifestation,  and  capable  of 

all  acts  declaratory  of  its  own  person  and  belongings. 

Especially  is  it  capable  of  putting   off  its   infirm 

natural  humanity,  and  showing  its  Divine  Humanity. 


LXXXIX. 


THE   MARCH    OF    ENDS. 


The  doctrine  of  final  causes  has  almost  disappeared 
out  of  the  sciences,  and  as  final  causes  mean  the 
objects  and  ideas  for  which  things  are  made,  the 
belief  in  a  ruling  mind  in  the  world,  an  end  of  ends 


THE  MARCH  OF  ENDS, 


339 


in  a  divine  Person,  has  become  an  open  or  indifferent 
question  to  the  scientists.  The  doctrine  of  contin- 
gencies, or  the  contest  of  chances,  as  of  one  force  at 
dice  with  another,  has  supplanted  the  doctrine  of 
ends.  In  this  wise,  nature  is  a  crew  of  selfhoods, 
pleading  themselves,  and  evolving  or  creating  them- 
selves. Every  stone,  plant,  fish,  bird,  beast,  is  an 
unguided  and  often  for  its  own  aggression  a  mis- 
guided selfhood.  And  this  world  of  strife  comes 
out  of  the  selfhood  of  science,  adopting  glory,  and 
ignoring  God.  It  is  the  close  correspondence  of  the 
scientist  mind  itself,  all  push  for  property,  and  no 
respect  for  propriety.  Now  the  contingencies  of 
nature  are  nothing  but  the  friction  and  so  far  the 
despoiling  of  the  true  end.  Moreover,  every  series 
of  them,  the  entire  world  of  chance,  the  stolidity  of 
the  natural  war,  is  provided  for,  and  imprisoned,  in 
other  greater  ends,  which  cover,  hold  down,  and 
recompense  aberration.  Hell  is  all  contingencies,  and 
struggling  unsuccessful  evolutions.  Heaven  is  the 
mighty  march  of  ends  to  perpetual  accomplishment; 
and  the  circulation  of  ends  back  to  the  Lord  from 
whom  they  originate.  All  the  contingencies  which 
have  occurred  are  taken  up,  and  re-absorbed,  and 
purified  by  repeated  breaths  of  truth,  in  repeated 
circulations.  Therefore  science  here  has  fallen  upon 
the  dead  parts  of  things  as  its  building  materials, 
and  yet  it  cannot  hold  them  because  they  are  not 
only  incoherent,  but  contentious.  In  dismissing 
ends,  it  has  ceased  to  commune  with  mind,  or  to  ex- 
pect to  meet  mind  in  nature.  The  last  resort  is, 
matter.  The  subtilization  of  matter  is  to  be  its 
deity;  and  much  has  been  said  of  how  respectful  we 
ought  to  be  to  matter,  and  how  little  we  can  limit 
what  matter  contains.     This  is  true  of  matter,  but 


340 


THE  MARCH  OF  ENDS. 


not  as  matter.  As  dead,  it  does  not  hold  life;  as 
selfship,  it  does  not  involve  God.  Nay  more,  its 
subtilization  is  but  a  mirage  for  the  mind.  Reasoning 
of,  in,  and  from  matter,  gravitation  pinions  you,  and 
you  cannot  keep  the  idea  sublimed;  you  cannot  keep 
it  thin ;  the  mind  in  it  will  gravitate  to  the  bottom, 
to  the  stones,  and  to  the  ground.  The  end  of 
such  a  mind  is  materialization;  it  is  of  the  earth, 
earthy. 

This,  however,  again  has  been  foreseen,  and  a 
natural  revelation,  a  personal  God,  a  bodily  spiritual 
world,  a  body  of  man  corresponding  to,  and  built  out 
from,  a  bodily  soul,  confronts  these  contingencies, 
and  will  confront  them  to  the  end,  and  re-absorb 
them.  And  what  survives  of  science  will  be  a  know- 
ledofe  of  the  mind  of  God  revealed  in  the  creatures, 
and  showing  through  their  forms  why  they  are 
created. 

The  doctrine  of  correspondences,  manifold  in  its 
faces,  is  also  the  doctrine  of  ends;  for  lower  things 
are  created  for  subjection  to  higher  things,  and  for 
harmony  with  them.  And  the  last  fact  of  harmony 
is  union,  and  unity.  And  no  body,  in  order,  can 
have  any  but  its  own  soul.  That  soul  overfills  it, 
and  combines  with  it  in  detail.  That  detail  exactly 
corresponds  to  the  lower  form  upon  which  it  is 
induced;  or,  in  other  words,  is  a  similar  reality  in  a 
higher  degree.  So  that  all  things  reach  upwards  by 
contrasted  similars  to  the  first  origin;  each  is  an  end 
to  the  other,  and  hence  they  correspond  bodily. 

Yet  it  requires  the  bodily  senses  of  the  spiritual 
world  to  be  opened  in  man  before  he  can  appreciate 
its  bodies.  Most  substantial  in  corporeity,  and  awful 
in  law,  impassable  in  gulfs,  doors  and  walls,  rocks 
and  mountains  of  the  inner  mind  itself,  that  world 


THE  MARCH  OF  ENDS. 


341 


is  yet  out  of  our  ken  if  we  have   no  faculties  or 
senses  to  perceive  it. 

It  seems  probable  that  the  revelations  made 
through  Swedenborg  will  one  day  be  brought  into 
relation  with  the  larger  tracts  of  veritable  and  veri- 
fied knowledsre.  For  as  we  have  seen,  he  has  been 
commissioned  to  give  from  the  opened  Word,  and 
from  collateral  spiritual  experience,  something  like 
a  history  of  the  spiritual  world,  recounting  its 
churches,  its  judgments,  it  planes  and  strata  of 
heavens  and  hells,  its  palseoanthropic  or  Adamic 
worlds;  its  celestial,  spiritual,  and  natural  kingdoms. 
So  that  there  is  extant  for  human  knowledge  a  more 
coherent  and  luminous  statement  of  the  history  of 
that  Avorld  than  exists  of  the  nations  and  peoples  of 
this  natural  world  ;  excepting  also  that  Swedenborg  s 
account  reaches  down  into  the  commonwealths  and 
churches  of  nature  from  the  beginning,  and  bathes 
them  in  a  light  of  unexpected  explanations.  It  is 
therefore  a  synopsis  of  the  history  of  man,  not  as  to 
kingdoms,  but  as  to  final  states;  not  as  to  faculties, 
but  as  to  good  and  evil  employment ;  not  as  a  single 
being  of  one  pattern,  but  as  palseoanthropic,  anthro- 
pic,  and  theoanthropic;  God  and  freewill  being  the 
common  fact  which  overlies  the  whole. 

Is  it  likely  that  the  history  of  the  natural  world 
does  not  correspond  to  this  history  set  over  against 
it  from  the  other  side  of  things  ?  Is  it  likely  that 
the  one  set  of  epochs  does  not  tally  with  the  other 
set  of  epochs  ?  The  subject  is  new,  and  new  light  is 
like  darkness  at  first.  But  if  the  mind  will  carefully 
study,  and  let  in  the  light  of  these  great  revelations 
upon  geology  and  astronomy,  perhaps  truths  will 
become  acquainted  with  truths,  facts  meet  congenial 
facts,  and   correlations  begin  to  appear.     Already 


342 


THE  MARCH  OF  ENDS, 


Swedenborg  s  works  account  for  the  ruins  and  per- 
verted records  of  a  various  mankind  found  every- 
where. They  may  reach  down  into  the  explanation 
of  cosmical  revolutions.  It  would  be  premature  to 
do  more  than  guess  that  a  sub-event,  a  contingency 
of  nature,  such  as  the  glacial  period,  might  coincide 
with  a  clearance  of  the  earth  as  a  more  temperate 
garden  for  the  Adamic  or  paradisal  church;  the  heat 
of  nature  cooled  that  the  tenderest  of  all  races  might 
be  in  possession  of  themselves,  and  in  freewill  there. 
For  God  can  veil  the  sun  if  imperfect  races  feeding 
upon  its  ardours  are  to  pass  away,  and  races  more  in 
the  modesty  of  nature  are  to  come  upon  the  scene. 
He  can  quench  and  cool  the  passions  of  solar  crea- 
tion, if  love  and  its  native  wisdom  are  to  find  a  first 
place  in  the  world;  as  they  did  in  the  Adamic  or 
celestial  Church.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  that  this 
should  not  take  place  to  fit  the  earth  for  man  s 
abode,  or  that  any  process  but  veiling,  and  cold, 
should  accomplish  the  result;  for  veiling,  and  cold, 
correspond  here  to  the  governance  of  passion  and  the 
true  reign  of  love.  The  earth  of  monsters  such  as 
geology  describes,  corresponding  to  the  earliest 
states  and  passions  of  unregenerated  man  (for  the 
earth  by  solidarity  of  ends  is  such  a  correspondence 
from  its  very  seed),  would  hardly  be  a  platform  for 
a  celestial  Church.  The  Lord  miglit  lull  it  to  sleep 
by  moderating  cold. 

These  are  imaginations  which  we  have  no  right  to 
fix  as  truths.  But  herein  the  function  of  imagina- 
tion in  science  is  again  discerned,  and  it  is  strictly 
Baconian,  because  it  is  experimental.  The  more 
imagination  there  is,  the  more  this  is  infilled  and 
enforced  with  high  details  of  ideas,  the  more  organic 
the  truths  that  press  upon  it  from  within  to   find 


THE  NE  W  IMA  GINA  TION, 


343 


their  mates  in  the  forms  and  events  of  nature,  the 
deeper  the  sense  of  use  to  mans  religion  under 
which  it  works,  the  more  prayer  and  love  that  lifts 
it,  and  the  more  the  Word  of  God  chastens  and  sub- 
dues and  informs  it,  evidently  so  much  the  more  of 
experimentation,  of  thought,  of  real  subject  matter, 
it  can  propose  to  the  nature  of  things  for  acceptance, 
and  to  the  mind  of  man  for  theory,  and  for  truth. 
Imagination  in  this  sense  comprises  the  inner  senses 
active  in  the  service  of  the  mind  that  would  come 
down  from  above.  Then  the  eurekas  that  strike 
it,  descend  unhindered  through  nature,  because  it  is 
transparent,  and  they  are  intuitions  from  God. 


xc. 


THE    NEW    IMAGINATION    OF    ILLUMINATED    REASON. 


The  scientific  men  at  present  are  afraid  of  imagina- 
tion, and  rightly  so,  because  they  have  no  grounds 
to  imagine  from  but  themselves,  and  because  they 
assign  to  imagination  work  like  creation,  which  con- 
fuses science;  whereas  its  proper  function  lies  in 
transplanting  correspondences  into  their  natural 
forms.  When  imagination  is  seen  to  be  one  humble 
spirit  that  carries  the  higher  world  down  into  the 
drama  of  the  lower,  it  correlates  with  true  knowledge 
and  helps  its  right  eye. 

Swedenborg,  apparently  one  of  the  least  imagina- 
tive of  men,  possessed  this  disciplined  faculty  to  an 
unparalleled  degree,  and  it  enabled  him  to  receive 
truths  that  could  not  gain  admission  into  other 
minds.  Here  is  one  of  them,— The  sun  of  the  spiri- 
tual world  is  pure  love  from  Jehovah  God,  who 


344 


THE  NEW  IMAGINATION  OF 


ILLUMINATED  REASON. 


345 


dwells  in  its  midst :  the  lieat  of  that  sun  is  love, 
the  liefht  of  it  is  wisdom.  Here  is  another  :  The  sun 
of  the  natural  world  is  pure  fire ;  in  itself  dead,  but 
actuated  towards  all  the  subordinate  parentage  of 
nature  by  the  living  loving  sun.  The  spiritual  sun 
is  not  God,  but  His  glorious  sphere  of  uses  :  He 
Himself  within  that  sun  is  a  personal  divine  man. 
Now  the  scientific  mind,  having  no  adequate  imagi- 
nation of  the  heart,  and  knowing  that  our  sun  is  the 
solid  of  solids  and  the  weight  of  weights  in  its  uni- 
verse, objects  to  the  thought  that  the  centre  of 
massive  orbs  is  dead  fire.  Its  ideas  of  fire  are  taken 
from  the  igrnited  smoke  of  its  own  candle.  Our 
experience  of  fire  here  is  of  heated  or  incandescent 
bodies;  this  is  the  fire  of  the  mere  senses.  But  fire, 
as  itself,  is  what  Swedenborg  postulates  of  the 
natural  sun  :  not  matter  on  fire,  but  fire.  Wliy 
should  not  fire  be  the  most  solid  and  enormous  of 
natural  bodies  in  a  creation  where  everything  tracked 
home  is  body?  It  must  be,  because  it  is  all  in  all  in 
nature.  The  spiritual  sun  strikes  the  prepared  plane 
of  nature  at  the  top,  the  anvil  for  the  divine  hammer, 
and  the  answer  to  the  stroke  in  the  dead  world 
is  the  natural  sun:  impersonal  fire  arising  on  the 
last  plane  or  limit  of  resistance  to  personal  fire. 
The  spiritual  sun  is  the  first  issue  of  the  divine  love, 
and  is  not  abstraction,  but  the  substance  of  sub- 
stances; and  the  natural  sun  is  solid  fire,  the  sub- 
stratum of  its  universe. 

The  fire  of  a  man  is  what  makes  him  attractive  to 
those  he  loves,  and  weighty  to  those  who  oppose 
him. 

Upon  this  natural  sun  two  coincident  ends  work; 
in  the  first  place  the  Divine  Sun,  regulating,  moderat- 
ing, creating;  in  the  second  place,  the  spiritual  and 


natural  states  of  men  on  earth,  for  upon  them  as 
upon  a  basis  heaven  and  the  universe  are  founded. 
It  is  not  therefore  wonderful  if  in  astronomical  and 
geological  history  events  are  recorded  which  find 
their  correlation  in  the  estoppel  of  nature  and  in  the 
dimness  of  her  sun. 

If  such  principles  as  these  which  Swedenborg  has 
given,  be  true  eyes,  it  is  impossible  to  say  what 
observations  they  may  make,  or  how  much  the 
physical  world  on  its  causal  or  intelligible  side, 
locked  as  it  is  against  materialism,  may  be  opened 
with  joyous  attestation  to  their  awakened  gaze. 
The  present  night  to  higher  t^uth,  with  its  revelry 
of  scoffing,  forecasts  an  illuminated  scientific  day 
from  an  opposite  mind.  It  promises  by  its  melan- 
choly stars  a  solar  science  over  the  New  City. 

One  thinof  is  certain  to  the  careful  student  of 
Swedenborg,  that  his  writings  bring  into  the  field  a 
vast  array  of  causes  which  it  has  not  entered  into 
the  heart  of  previous  philosophical  man  to  conceive; 
and  that  reverently  to  try  the  fitting  of  these  upon 
the  thousand-fold  locks  of  nature  will  be  an  employ- 
ment of  the  hi^rher  science  for  some  time  to  come. 
We  are  bound  to  no  hurry  in  the  case.  His  books 
are  practically  just  published  and  brought  face  to 
face  with  the  modern  mind.  Any  amount  of  work 
of  mistakes  is  inevitable  with  such  a  multitude  of 
keys  and  locks.  Moreover  a  new  frame  of  mind,  a 
neoanthropos,  who  loves  to  affirm  the  religious  truth 
which  the  old  Adam  loves  to  deny,  is  the  indispen- 
sable hand  to  make  each  trial  of  fitness,  and  the  only 
mind  that  can  or  will  enter  the  opened  doors. 


346      LOVE,  THE  LIFE  OF  MAN  IN  SCIENCE, 


XCI. 

LOVE    IS    THE    LIFE    OF    MAN    IN   SCIENCE    ALSO. 

In  nothing  has  Swedenborg  done  a  greater  service 
to  judicial  thought,  or  more  gravely  supplemented 
the  Baconian  perceptions,  than  in  his  primary  doc- 
trine, already  dwelt  upon,  that  love  is  the  life  of  man, 
— qiiod  amor  sit  vita  hominis.  For  this  imports  that 
the  reigning  love  and  its  affections,  given  in  the  very 
seed,  and  throughout  life  constituting  the  natural 
character  of  the  man,  determine  his  perceptions,  his 
understanding,  his  intellect,  and  his  imaginations,  and 
rule  as  an  incessant  heart  in  his  pursuits.  For  this, 
deeply  concealed  from  him  for  the  most  part,  he  is 
acting  and  thinking  all  day  long.  His  impartiality 
is  a  fluent  part  of  his  affections.  His  love  of  truth 
is  a  love  of  those  perceptions  and  thoughts  which 
carry  out  the  springs  of  his  mind;  in  other  words  it 
is  the  first  form  of  his  ruling  love.  This  ruling  love 
allows  the  intellect  to  seem  to  govern  it,  to  seem  to 
show  a  pure  light  into  which  no  passions  enter,  and 
thus  assumes  a  mental  calmness  and  judicial  pose 
which  sit  upon  and  cover  the  seat  of  fire :  ignes  sup- 
positos  cineri  doloso.  This  is  possible  where  it  is  not 
opposed.  The  volume  and  acerbity  of  passion  behind 
manifest  themselves  however  when  the  selfhood  is 
attacked,  for  the  selfhood  is  the  centre  of  the  centre; 
the  love  of  self  at  the  core.  No  matter  whether  it 
be  mathematics,  or  physics,  or  astronomy,  or  geo- 
logy, so  long  as  the  currents  of  thought  from  love 
and  its  delight  which  are  investigating  them  are 


LOVE,  THE  LIFE  OF  MAN  IN  SCIENCE,      347 

unattacked,  the  scientist  is  comfortable  and  at  one 
with  himself,  apparently  making  watery  solution  of 
his  truths;  but  when  he  has  gained  a  position,  formed 
a  theory,  and  brought  it  into  harmony  with  self,  and 
made  an  aureole  of  it  round  the  head  of  self-love, 
any  question  of  its  foundations  threatens  his  being, 
he  becomes  white  hot  from  concussion  w^ith  opposite 
principles,  and  a  fiery  solution  of  truths  is  what  he 
seeks :  and  then  his  fact  is,  though  he  dare  not  say 
it,  for  self-love  in  science  will  not  bear  nakedness, 
sic  volo,  sic  jiiheo,  stet  pro  ratione  voluntas.  The 
voluntas,  the  will,  is  the  ruling  love.  For,  as  Swe- 
denborg says :  What  a  man  loves,  that  he  wills,  and 
that  he  calls  good;  and  the  confirmations  of  that 
good  he  calls  truths. 

Let  us  therefore  put  aside  the  conceit  that  there 
can  be  impartiality  in  the  speculative  or  unapplied 
sciences,  or  that  cold  consideration  lies  near  their 
heart.  Indeed,  let  us  cease  to  believe  that  there  are 
any  unapplied  sciences.  For  they  are  all  either  the 
ministers  to  the  useful  or  the  pernicious  arts  of  life, 
or  else  to  men's  passions  for  evil  creeds,  or  affections 
for  good  ones.  In  both  which  cases  also  they  are 
strictly  applied  to,  and  worn  by,  the  latent  loves 
within  them. 

History,  and  the  experience  of  to-day,  the  re- 
corded cold  furies  of  learned  debate,  bear  out  these 
remarks,  and  reveal  science  not  as  a  senate  and 
balance  for  weighing  the  pure  gold  of  truth,  but  as  a 
duel-island  on  which  revelation  and  atheism  thrown 
the  sword  into  the  scales.  The  battle  as  in  old  Rome 
will  be  decided  not  by  gold,  but  by  iron;  for  neither 
combatant  can  get  oflf  the  island,  or  be  bought  out  of 
the  field.  ''  Iron  "  is  natural  truth :  "  the  Lord  "  will 
ultimately  ''rule  the  nations,"  that  is,  the  evils  of 


348      LOVE,  THE  LIFE  OF  MAN  IN  SCIENCE. 

men,  with  the  power  of  natural  truth,  that  is  ''  with 
a  rod  of  iron."  This  does  not  import  that  cold  truth 
will  prevail,  for  there  is  no  such  thing  as  cold  truth, 
and  if  there  were,  hot  men  like  the  present  race 
could  not  elicit  it.  But  it  prophesies  that  the  truths 
dug  out  by  self-love,  and  which  become  its  armour- 
plating  in  the  atheistical  sciences,  will  try  hot  con- 
clusions with  the  divine  natural  truth  embodied  in 
the  minds  of  other  men;  and  the  zeal  of  perception 
and  God-seeing  in  the  latter,  will  overbear  the 
adversary  self,  which  knows  no  nature  but  its  own, 
and  after  the  combat,  and  the  victory,  will  show 
where  the  true  iron  is;  where  the  truth  of  the  true 
love  abides. 

Nothing  of  this  would  be  necessary  if  it  were 
possible  for  science  to  have  no  motives  but  those  of 
perceiving  the  most  limited  relations  of  dead  and 
living  nature.  But  this  is  not  possible,  because  the 
makers  of  science  are  men,  and  men  have  tier  over 
tier  of  faculties  within  them,  all  of  which  must  go 
forth  and  be  satisfied.  The  present  visible  aim 
of  science  is,  to  gain  the  whole  w^orld,  and  lose  its 
own  soul, — to  comprehend  all  things  in  formulas 
of  knowledge,  and  to  push  self  thus  aggrandized 
through  the  other  and  upper  frontier,  and  there 
deify  it.  As  this  is  the  reigning  love,  the  imperial 
ambition  of  self,  and  as  indifferentism  as  a  cloak,  hot 
indifferentism,  not  impartiality,  is  the  body  of  ap- 
pearance turned  to  all  appeal  for  peace,  it  is  evident 
that  the  battle,  the  prolonged  war,  of  these  great 
affections  must  take  place.  And  Swedenborg  has 
done  the  work  of  showing  who  the  combatants  are; 
and  of  putting  the  human  understanding  in  its  right 
place,  as  the  vassal  of  interior  passions  in  the  service 
of  evil,  and  as  the  minister  of  useful  and  good  affections 


LOVE,  THE  LIFE  OF  MAN  IN  SCIENCE.      349 

for  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  good  of  man's  estate. 
Ponder  then  well  as  a  scientific  organon,  that  saying, 
*^  Love  is  the  life  of  man,"  the  simplicity  of  which 
seems  at  first  to  have  no  contents,  yet  on  both 
sides  it  unmasks  human  nature,  and  unlocks  human 
nature;  and  with  those  who  desire  to  be  regenerated, 
and  thus  to  have  the  single  eye,  it  corrects  human 
sciences  at  their  fountain  springs,  in  the  heart  and 
the  motives;  and  eliminates  the  ambition  to  be  as 
gods  from  the  possible  ways  of  knowing  nature. 

The  position  that  "  love  is  the  life  of  man  "  is  cor- 
related with  all  history,  and  runs  through  every 
ambition  and  pursuit  that  has  moved  in  the  world. 
The  quality  of  the  love  justifies  it,  or  condemns  it. 
There  are  as  many  diverse  affections  of  love  as  there 
are  men  and  women,  and  each  affection  has  its 
delight,  which  draws  it  on,  and  through  which  it 
moves.  Each  delight  kindles  the  mind  to  coincident 
perceptions  or  self  evidences.  These  seen  in  the 
glass  of  things  are  the  truths  of  that  state.  By  it 
the  man  enters  his  own  world,  or  God's  world,  as 
the  case  may  be,  in  the  natural  world.  This  all  be- 
comes ultimately  the  scientific  wealth  of  the  love; 
as  Swedenborg  calls  it  when  in  the  memory,  the 
scientifics.  And  thus  the  intellect,  the  presumed 
organ  of  mere  dry  truth,  is  on  the  largest  scale  the 
private  and  public  advocate  of  the  greatest  truths  of 
good,  or  of  the  most  monstrous  falses  of  evil. 

Faha  mail, — Swedenborg  opposes  this  to  vera 
honi.  The  word  falsities  does  not  commensurately 
translate  the  opposition. 


350 


THE  RULING  LOVES, 


XCII. 


THE    RULING    LOVES. 


No  man  has  yet  lived,  save  only  He  who  knew  what 
was  in  man,  who  has  approached  to  Swedenborg  in 
the  knowledge  of  human  nature.  He  has  not  shown 
it  dramatically  like  Shakespear  (though  his  books 
are  indeed  the  drama  of  the  judgments  of  the  ages) ; 
for  the  divine  judgments  which  he  was  commissioned 
to  declare  are  out  of  the  province  of  art,  which  may 
subsist  before,  and  after,  not  in,  the  Armageddon. 
But  the  kuowledge  was  given  him  with  the  courage 
to  attain  it.  His  outward  character  was  so  kindly 
and  genial,  and  so  peaceable,  that  had  he  not  been 
tempered  for  his  mission,  it  is  difficult  to  account  for 
the  audacity  of  his  exploration  of  human  nature,  of 
his  front  to  evil  men  and  women,  and  to  collective 
evil  societies  and  institutions,  and  of  the  final  prin- 
ciples of  demarcation  between  good  and  evil  which 
reign  without  compromise  in  his  works.  His 
generalizations  are  the  theory  and  truth  of  the  world 
of  character.  Yet  they  are  never  abstractions,  but 
are  clothed  upon  for  illustration  with  the  history  of 
churches,  states,  and  individuals,  with  which  they 
correlate.  They  go  behind  apparent  motives  to  the 
central  loves,  that  is  lives,  of  mankind.  Of  these, 
the  love  of  self  is  primordial;  its  going  forth  into 
action  since  the  beginning,  has  devastated  the 
highest  regions  of  the  human  mind;  and  externally 
has  constituted  empire  with  its  consequences,  the 
love  of  dominion  for  the  sake  of  self.  Its  supreme 
form  is  exhibited  in  religion,  in  the  love  of  dominion 
over  souls  for  the  sake  of  self.     In  Scripture  it  is  the 


THE  RULING  LOVES, 


351 


Devil;  in  the  other  life  it  is  the  diabolical  hell,  the 
deepest  of  all  the  hells,  opposite,  foot  to  foot,  to  the 
highest  or  the  celestial  heaven,  which  consists  in 
love  to  the  Lord,  and  love  of  self  for  the  sake  of  the 
Lord.  Wherever  it  exists,  its  name  in  correspond- 
ence is  Babylon.  Its  most  visible  representative  on 
earth  at  present  is  the  papacy,  the  Babylon  that  is 
now  being  destroyed.  The  second  ruling  love  is  the 
love  of  the  world  and  its  possessions  for  the  sake  of 
self,  and  its  aim  is  the  capture  of  the  whole  world  in 
the  interest  of  the  individual  selfhood;  the  false  love 
of  place,  position,  honour,  wealth,  health,  philoso- 
phies, sciences,  not  for  use  but  for  greed  and 
dominance.  Its  derivative  affections  are  a  great 
family  of  lusts;  and  the  exhibition  of  it  lies  in  the 
pursuit  of  the  world  for  self,  and  not  for  others ;  for 
the  delight  of  having  and  holding,  and  not  for  use ; 
for  earth's  sake,  not  for  heaven  s.  It  is  the  Satan  of 
Scripture;  and  its  final  endowment  and  establish- 
ment is  in  the  second  or  satanical  hells,  which  are 
opposite  to  the  spiritual  heavens,  where  use  to  the 
neighbour  is  the  king  and  master  of  life.  Against 
this  heaven  it  stands  foot  to  foot.  The  whole  world, 
though  overruled  to  order,  is  the  exhibition  of  it.  A 
fearful  love  with  no  faith;  fearful  that  if  others  are 
raised  up  and  happier,  and  if  the  currents  of  worldly 
possession  circulate,  no  riches  will  be  left;  it  is  stone- 
hearted  :  its  heart  holds  its  blood  to  itself,  profoundly 
believing  that  if  the  body  is  alive  the  heart  will  die. 
As  the  love  of  dominion  for  self  is  the  great  ancestor 
of  evil,  so  the  love  of  the  world  for  self  is  the  parent 
of  falsity.  The  third  love  is  the  love  of  pleasure, 
and  in  its  more  superficial  compass  it  enchains  the 
natural  man,  and  in  the  spiritual  world  constitutes 
the  natural  hells  which  proximately  communicate 


352 


THE  RULING  LOVES, 


with  men  on  earth.  It  is  antipodal  to  the  natural 
heavens,  where  the  ultimate  delights  of  use  are  the 
happiness  of  the  societies.  All  adulterous  loves  and 
perversions  of  sex  have  also  their  own  places ;  and  as 
sex  is  immortal  in  the  heavens  and  the  hells,  these 
loves  reign  from  limit  to  limit  in  the  spiritual  world; 
and  their  happiness,  or  unliappiness,  pervades  every 
degree.  Now  these  classifications,  acceptable  as 
they  one  day  will  be  to  science,  are  not  of  the 
abstract  philosophy  of  the  mind,  but  of  simple 
revealed  light  coming  along  the  track  of  experience. 
They  come  out  of  the  Word,  the  internal  sense  of 
which  contains  them.  They  were  shown  and  con- 
firmed to  Swedenboror  in  terrible  imasfes  in  lonof 
visits  to  the  hells;  and  he  has  recorded  them  ex- 
tensively in  his  works,  and  still  more  visibly  in  his 
posthumous  Spiritual  Diary.  There  you  see  what 
human  nature,  what  the  selfhood  is,  stripped  of  all 
its  coverings,  carried  out  to  its  consequences,  carried 
out  also  through  its  correspondences  into  a  triple 
world  of  evil  and  false  and  voluptuous  kingdoms 
which  is  human  nature  over  again,  and  of  which  it  is 
the  core,  the  centre,  and  the  plane.  You  see  also 
the  inevitable  limitation  of  devilism  by  devilism,  of 
satan  by  satan,  and  of  pleasure  useless  and  at  the 
expense  of  mankind  by  pain.  You  see  also  the 
reign  of  the  opposite  loves  in  heaven,  the  blessedness 
of  the  celestial,  the  happiness  of  the  spiritual,  and 
the  pleasures  of  the  natural  angels;  and  the  river  of 
these  that  flows  from  the  Lord  momentaneously 
into  the  capacity  of  each  man  and  woman  for  putting 
down  the  self  loves  which  would  impede  the  trans- 
figuring angelic  influx. 


SWEDENBORG  AND  FOURIER, 


353 


\ 


XCIII. 


SWEDENBORG   AND    FOURIER. 


These  things  are  given  in  Swedenborg,  not  how- 
ever as  generalizations,  but  embodied  in  narratives 
of  the  existing  states  and  conditions  of  men  and 
women  in  the  heavens  and  the  hells;  for  he  was  even 
friendly  with  both,  and  talked  to  them  as  a  man  with 
men.  As  a  gross  confirmation  in  immortality,  he 
was  permitted  to  see  all  the  deceased  whom  he  had 
known  on  earth,  and  it  was  given  him  to  know  who 
they  had  been,  and  what  they  now  are.  His 
accounts  as  we  have  said  are  not  dramatic;  they  are 
such  accounts  as  such  a  traveller  could  give ;  they 
are  all  like  Swedenborg  s  way  of  receiving  and  show- 
ing things,  and  like  no  other  man's,  personality  being 
not  only  the  highest  but  the  only  thing  that  can  be 
made  use  of  for  any  purpose  of  revelation.  Yet 
they  are  instantly  translateable  into  the  uses  and 
truths  of  the  open  human  mind.  And  thus  this 
didactic  man,  the  scoff*  of  some  artists  and  poets,  has 
left  behind  him  pictures  and  statues  and  dramas  of 
good  and  evil  which  begin  above  where  Shake- 
spears  mind  ends,  and  descend  beneath  his  dramatic 
feet  into  realities  and  caverns  of  tragedy  which  his 
mind,  limited  to  earth,  could  not  know. 

It  has  been  said  of  Swedenborg  that  his  works  are 

but   repetitions   about    good    and   truth,    evil   and 

falsity,  and  the  like  abstract  terms,  and  that  they 

lack  the  interest  and  attestation  of  the  variety  of 

men  and  things.     This  is  not  true  of  his  works  on 

the  whole,  especially  of  the  spiritual  narrations  with 

z 


A 


354 


SWEDENBORG  AND  FOURIER. 


which  they  are  carefully  interspersed.  But  it  is 
true  that  human  good  and  evil,  and  their  amazing 
consequences,  are  his  theme.  And  it  is  true  that  the 
inauguration  of  a  New  Church  upon  earth,  is  his 
mission.  Nor  of  a  New  Church  alone,  but  of  a 
renovated  society,  which  stands  in  apocalyptical 
prophecy  under  the  name  and  description  of  the  New 
Jerusalem.  Now  many  have  laboured  —  mulii 
sudaruiit — at  the  institution  of  a  new  Jerusalem, 
and  certainly  one  of  the  greatest  geniuses  of  modern 
Europe,  Charles  Fourier,  has  attempted  the  renewal 
of  society  upon  the  principles  of  ascertaining  the 
contents  of  human  nature,  and  then  carrying  them 
out  by  skilfully  adapted  attractions  to  happy  com- 
bined issues,  each  passion  for  all,  and  all  for  each ; 
and  with  a  harmony  for  a  result,  which  for  a  truly 
gifted  ingenuity  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired  but  ap- 
plicability to  mankind.  It  might  seem  as  if  he  had 
been  permitted  to  show  by  splendid  work  like  science, 
by  mockeries  and  mirages  of  science,  a  socialism 
the  very  opposite  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  coming  down 
from  genius  where  it  stops  short  of  heaven,  and  is 
independent  of  regeneration.  It  is  full  of  detail, 
clairvoyant  and  mighty  in  its  dialectics  against 
corrupt  civilization.  It  shows  the  wealth  to  be  won, 
and  the  love  to  be  enjoyed.  It  characterizes  the 
failure  of  common  selfishness,  and  the  necessity  for  a 
high  quasi-selfishness,  before  the  epochs  of  harmony 
can  dawn.  It  abounds  in  splendid  conceptions 
which  will  be  adopted  in  the  future,  as  of  attractive 
against  repulsive  industry,  and  of  industrial  armies 
in  place  of  destructive  armies.  In  short,  it  is  a 
taking  world,  that  only  wants  inhabitants :  but  there 
is  no  man  found.  Now  upon  this  No  Man,  who  at 
present  embraces  all  men,  these  simple  Swedenborg- 


SWEDENBORG  AND  FOURIER, 


355 


substances  of  good  and  truth  have  to  work  with  re- 
generative effect  before  he  can  constitute  a  society 
founded  on  any  new  principles.  The  old  ones  are 
^*played  out."  There  is  nothing  new  in  men  doing 
what  they  like,  and  coming  to  the  end  of  it,  limited 
by  death,  disgust,  or  by  other  men.  There  would 
be  nothing  new  if  all  men  did  what  they  like,  except- 
ing that  the  very  limits  of  the  hells  would  be 
visibly  set  up  in  this  life;  and  instead  of  a  man's 
house  being  his  castle,  as  in  happy  old  England,  he 
would  call  upon  the  rocks  to  cover  him,  and  would 
live  in  them  for  his  own  safe  society.  But  posi- 
tively the  only  new  thing,  the  only  fresh  point  of 
departure,  that  can  be  done  and  made  on  earth,  is  by 
this  very  *'good  and  truth,"  than  which  there  is  truly 
nothing  else  in  Swedenborg.  The  novelty,  in  all  the 
day's  work,  of  shunning  all  evils,  not  because  they 
entail  bad  consequences  (for  that  motive  animally 
governs  hell),  but  because  they  are  sins  against  the 
Lord;  and  of  doing  all  things  as  uses  to  the 
neighbour.  This  is  the  turn  in  principles;  the 
revolution  in  human  nature;  and  each  such  combat 
of  a  mind,  and  such  stroke  of  a  work,  is  a  descent  of 
a  little  stone  of  the  building  of  that  only  city  which 
is  simple  above  human  mysteries,  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem. It  is  the  received  action  of  divine  truth  first, 
and  then  of  divine  good,  upon  the  willing  and 
striving  mind. 

As  this  truth  is  accepted,  and  as  the  evils,  per- 
sonal and  administrative,  which  the  truth  brands,  are 
avoided  because  the  Lord  hates  them;  and  goods 
are  done  to  the  neighbour  because  they  are  good; 
regenerated  men  and  women  will  be  able  to  live  under 
any  governments,  or  in  any  kind  of  societies,  which 
suit  the  special  characters  of  their  minds :  in  com- 


,. 


35^ 


METAPHYSICS, 


munity,  in  competition,  in  co-operation.  Nay  more, 
as  heaven  is  opened  in  such  regenerative  acts,  and  in 
their  continuance  will  be  generally  opened,  and  the 
governments,  and  polities,  and  socialities,  which  sub- 
sist above  will  open  into  hearts  and  minds  below,  it 
is  clear  as  noonday  that  the  downward  influx,  with 
a  delight  which  former  genius  never  knew,  and  with 
a  variety  as  of  a  creating  hand,  will  shape  the  swift 
mechanism  of  social  things,  as  a  potter^s  wheel  shapes 
clay ;  that  the  New^  Society  thus  gifted  and  guided 
will  take  care  of  itself ;  that  forethought  and  money 
will  disappear  out  of  polity;  and  the  largess  of  pro- 
vidence be  the  future. 


XCIV. 


METAPHYSICS. 


One  thing  that  comes  broadly  out  of  the  psycho- 
logical and  pneumatological  revelation  of  the  hearts 
or  loves  of  mankind  as  seen  in  their  collective  results 
in  the  heavens  and  the  hells,  is  the  unimportance  of 
the  so-called  metaphysical  sciences  as  accounts  of  the 
human  being.  For  where  a  substance  requires  in  its 
very  nature  to  be  corrected  or  regenerated  before  it 
is  worth  knowing,  where  it  is  rapidly  in  transit  to  an 
unknown  end,  there  can  be  no  fixed  knowledge  of  its 
action  until  the  limit  of  its  movement  is  attained  and 
known.  The  faculties  of  man  stand  in  this  case.  The 
terms  and  science  of  regeneration,  or  of  degenera- 
tion, are  the  account  of  them  on  the  way:  the  know- 
ledo-e  of  heaven  and  hell  is  the  only  metaphysic  of  the 
end.  Short  of  this,  even  the  list  and  hortus  siccus 
of  faculties  cannot  be  complete,  because  it  is  in  their 


" 


■* 


METAPHYSICS,  357 

going  forth  that  they  are  seen  for  what  they  really 
are ;  and  only  the  illuminated  eye  dare  see  their  ten- 
dencies, much  more,  their  final  states.  All  past 
metaphysics,  not  knowing  of  the  spiritual  world,  have 
omitted  the  loves  of  man  out  of  their  calculation,  for 
which  reason  they  have  been  alien  to  history  and 
derided  by  practice ;  they  have  considered  men  not 
as  seeds  that  grow  and  bear  fruit,  but  as  stones  that 
do  not  grow;  and  they  have  tended  to  fix  in  their 
studio  that  nature  which  is  perforce  fluent  to  rege- 
nerative life,  or  else  wearing  away  into  devastation. 

Another  point  is,  that  true  knowledge  presses.  If 
death  were  true,  instead  of  being  a  mere  appearance 
to  be  corrected ;  or  if  the  sleep  of  the  grave  were 
true,  as  the  old  churches  teach  it,  the  motives  to 
know  the  spiritual  world  would  be  aboHshed  in  the 
first  case,  and  confused  beyond  extrication  in  the 
latter.  But  where  the  loves  which  are  the  lives  of 
men  are  continuous,  and  their  apparent  death  is  their 
instant  resurrection,  and  they  go  to  their  own  fathers, 
that  is  to  say,  to  the  great  affectional  societies  with 
which  they  were  in  correspondence  by  acts  of  life 
here,  the  conscience  of  every  day  is  the  metaphysic 
that  is  needed,  and  the  knowledge  of  the  aflfections  of 
the  heart  is  the  tutor  of  life.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, a  revelation,  from  heaven  and  from  hell,  of 
what  the  afiections  lead  to,  and  of  what  they  are,  is 
of  prime  moment  in  the  conduct  of  a  man.  And 
those  theologies  which  obscure  this  revelation,  and 
teach  that  human  seeds  do  not  grow  into  human » 
trees,  but  are  miraculously  wrought  into  something 
else  after  ages  of  sleep  in  another  way,  leave  human 
nature  as  they  find  it,  but  with  a  bias  deepened  to 
self  and  the  world. 


358 


ART. 


xcv. 


ART. 


Art,  as  a  cherished  exhibition  of  the  faculties,  also 
comes  in  here.  In  its  various  forms,  in  literature 
and  the  fine  arts,  it  will  always  be  an  amusement  of 
the  cultivated  races,  and  embody  the  holidays  of 
their  minds ;  and  be  measured  by  honesty  of  pro- 
duction, and  the  gift  of  passing  nature  and  events 
through  the  imagination,  and  reproducing  them, 
representative  and  ideal,  and  thus  less  temporal  and 
mortal,  in  drama,  in  poem  and  in  picture.  But  this  is 
not  the  state  in  which  the  faculty  of  productive  art 
can  be  left  at  the  present  crisis.  Art  is  in  a  pause 
at  this  hour.  There  is  material  power,  and  taste,  and 
purchase  :  great  picture-dealing,  and  supply  created 
by  demand.  But  the  spiritual  power  is  lacking,  and 
the  ends  of  art  are  not  accepted  by  artists.  The 
belief  in  good  purpose,  not  to  say  high  and  holy  pur- 
pose, is  as  much  banished  for  art,  as  the  doctrine  of 
final  causes  is  chased  out  of  the  sciences.  And  yet 
this  is  the  life  of  art,  and  the  condition  of  its  better 
inspirations.  The  perception  of  this  fact  belongs  to 
the  New  Jerusalem.  Swedenborg  tells  us  from 
experience  that  the  arts,  like  the  sciences,  subsist  in 
the  heavens,  that  the  stage  and  the  drama  are  there 
as  well  as  on  earth,  and  that  in  the  theatre  above 
pieces  are  acted  '*ex  quibus  aliquid  divinse  provi- 
dentise  elucet," — stories  from  which  some  movement 
of  the  divine  providence  shines  visibly  forth.  This 
is  a  regenerative  ray  of  command  to  be  well  heeded 
by  the  band  of  artists  upon  earth.  They  could  stay 
where  they  were  in  former  ages;  now  they  must 


; 


ART. 


359 


either  be  more  inspired  than  they  have  been,  or 
degradation  will  be  speedy.  Art  must  accept  re- 
generation as  the  means  to  its  new  gifts;  it  must 
quit  amusement,  and  take  to  burden-bearing;  in- 
stead of  the  holy  families  of  Raphael  and  the  past, 
it  must  freely  minister  in  a  new  church  to  filling 
the  receptive  imagination  with  the  beauty  of  the 
triumphs  of  good  over  evil  in  human  affairs,  and  to 
showing  the  drama  of  the  spirit  and  the  Word  through 
the  letter  of  the  world.  It  must  raise  mankind 
towards  pity  and  love  and  virtue,  towards  the  beauty 
of  holiness,  or  it  will  sink  into  decrepitude. 

In  saying  this,  the  fact  is  not  overlooked,  that 
great  artists  in  their  best  works,  do  already  show 
the  ways  of  providence,  the  wreck  of  evil  in  its  own 
success,  and  the  way  of  good  as  a  light  for  genius 
where  inspiration  may  join  the  mind.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  read  Macbeth  without  seeing  this  exempli- 
fied. But  our  position  is  that  this  must  become  the 
ruling  spirit  of  art,  and  its  secular  mind  be  pene- 
trated and  corrected,  not  infringed  or  destroyed,  by 
the  pressure  of  the  new  responsibility  to  work 
towards  public  and  private  good.  The  steadfast 
spirit  of  good  purpose  carries  no  enslaving  or  de- 
grading livery  on  its  back :  it  is  no  pedant,  but  a 
mighty  heart-opener  and  art-opener.  It  does  not 
work  from  set  morals,  but  from  the  love  of  God  in 
human  kind.  Prayer  is  the  proper  attitude  of  the 
artist,  before  and  often  in  his  work ;  and  praise  after 
it.  This  cannot  be  if  his  pencil  utters  idle  forms  of 
things,  which  are  for  him  the  idle  words  which  will 
be  judged  in  the  judgment  day  of  his  character. 

Contrary  to  this,  the  divine  right  of  art  to  do 
what  it  likes,  to  open  its  mouth  and  let  out  the 
blasts  of  its  genius  from  wheresoever  it  comes,  has 


36o 


GENIUS  AND  INSPIRATION 


\ 


been  pleaded  of  late,  just  as  the  divine  right  of 
science  to  do  cruel  evils,  is  now  asserted.  And  it  is 
contended  that  if  art  be  subject  to  religion,  it  will 
become  didactic  and  enthralled.  Nothing  of  the 
kind  need  be  feared.  Art,  as  g^i^asi-creative,  must 
needs  be  free,  and  work  from  its  own  centre.  But 
like  man,  it  must  be  free  for  good,  and  not  for 
evil;  and  if  there  is  no  good  in  it,  then  it  must 
needs  be  rejected  as  standing  out  of  the  ways 
of  true  beauty.  Criminal  art  cannot  do  what  it 
likes  any  more  than  criminal  man ;  it  is  in  nature's 
jail.  Inspiration  with  freedom  comes  down  from 
above,  not  up  from  below;  and  whatever  art,  poem, 
picture,  or  drama,  is  inflated  by  hot  blasts  of  passion, 
or  moved  by  hatred  of  what  is  holy,  comes  out  of 
the  selfhood ,  and  glorifies  the  selfhood  in  the  work. 
This  is  essential  slavery,  though  the  poet  does  not 
feel  it  in  this  world,  because  he  is  as  he  thinks  only 
his  own  slave.  But  his  gratified  pride  shuts  off 
influx  from  the  inspiring  spheres,  and  in  worshipping 
himself  in  his  production,  his  creativeness  stops,  and 
cannot  be  resumed.  The  will  that  art  is  irrespective 
of  good,  is  the  paralysis  of  art;  and  because  such 
art  feeds  upon  itself,  it  is  ultimately  the  leanness  of 
art;  and  may  become  its  unappeasable  hunger,  foul- 
ness in  its  ways,  and  raving  madness  at  last.  Such 
things  have  been  with  fine  minds  from  the  power  of 
the  disappointment  of  the  deified  selfhood. 


XCVI. 


\ 


GENIUS   AND   INSPIRATION. 


It  is  a  mistake  in  the  realm  of  art,  as  well  as  in 
life,   to   regard  genius   as  a   final  gift  which   only 


GENIUS  AND  INSPIRATION 


361 


i 


V 


requires  culture  and  working  forth ;  for  genius  comes 
to  an  untimely  end  under  these  conditions.  The 
first  genius  is  such  a  gift,  but  the  continuity  of  genius 
implies  its  subjugation  and  regeneration,  after  which 
its  inspiration  is  given.  All  persons  are  men  or 
women  of  genius  in  some  department,  and  their 
genius  is  the  first  spring  and  aptitude  and  delight 
of  th^r  minds ;  but  ^  for  the  most  part  they  die 
out  into  commonplace,  and  seek  from  without  the 
second  excitement  of  their  lives.  This  is  inevitable, 
unless  the  genius  itself,  kept  in  industry,  at  some 
point  undergoes  conversion  to  God,  to  disinterested 
use,  and  works  for  mankind.  Then  its  inspiration, 
and  we  may  say  immortality,  begins;  and  it  works 
on  with  no  mind  that  there  is  any  death,  or  that  its 
function  will  be  arrested,  or  be  otherwise  than  raised 
when  the  man  is  transplanted  into  the  spiritual 
world.  It  is  a  mighty  thing  for  genius  to  work 
under  this  sense  of  deathlessness,  the  opposite  to 
the  love  of  fame  which  works  for  immortality  here 
below  where  immortality  is  mortal.  Swedenborg 
is  a  case  in  point  of  this  second  birth  and  second 
coming  of  genius  in  a  man.  After  a  life  of  great 
labours  in  his  mining  office  and  at  his  desk,  during 
which  his  thought  explored,  and  his  pen  gave  forth, 
a  vast  way  of  truths  in  the  physical  sciences,  always 
with  the  end  of  use  in  view,  he  at  length  seemed  to 
be  on  the  point  of  attaining  the  object  which  had 
been  latent  in  his  heart  from  early  years,  a  complete 
view  of  psychology  in  physiology ;  or  of  the  mode  of 
the  souls  habitation  in  the  organism  of  the  body. 
Here  his  transcendent  genius  had  done  its  work, 
and  of  itself  could  go  no  further.  But  the  main 
thing  had  happened;  the  genius  had  been  disci- 
plined and  had  become  converted  in  the  process; 


362     SWEDENBORG  FOUNDS  A  NEW  SANITY. 

and  was  a  prepared  instrument  for  a  new  genius 
evoked  by  a  divine  illumination.  At  the  age  of  55, 
he  asrain  became  a  little  child,  and  received  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  as  a  little  child.  After  the  great 
series  of  works  done  in  his  first  life,  he  grew  up 
again  through  a  second  youth  and  manhood  in  a 
series  of  works  incomparably  important,  produced 
his  crowning  volume,  the  True  Christian  Religion, 
at  84  years  of  age;  and  then  passed  out  in  mature 
manhood  into  his  latent  immortal  youth.  There 
was  no  second  childhood  except  as  a  new  and  more 
innocent  spring  of  a  constantly  replenished  power. 
Of  course  he  had  a  special  mission;  but  then  his 
case  and  achievement  is  a  herald  and  a  type  of  what 
will  be  given  to  all  men  who  will  accept  God  s  mis- 
sions. He  drank,  as  we  may  drink,  of  the  ascer- 
tained fountain  of  youth,  of  which  if  genius  drinks 
not,  it  dies  out,  but  if  it  drinks  well  it  will  have 
two  lives  here,  and  then  live  for  ever. 

There  is  a  time  when  every  selfhood  is  baffled  by 
its  own  accomplishments,  and  sees  their  end;  that 
is  God's  opportunity;  and  the  life  must  then  be 
converted  and  re-inspired,  or  decay. 


XCVII. 

SWEDENBORG   FOUNDS   A   NEW   SANITY. 

The  world  has  tried  hard  to  show  in  Swedenborg's 
exalted  case,  that  this  future  life  beyond  his  selfhood 
was  a  state  of  insanity,  and  that  a  brain  fever  stood 
at  its  beginning,  and  accounted  for  the  results. 
Whether  he  ever  had  a  fever,  or  not,  may  be  doubt- 


i 


SWEDENBORG  FOUNDS  A  NEW  SANITY.      ^6^ 

ful,  but  it  rests  on  no  record  more  authentic  than  a 
letter  written  long  after  the  alleged  event,  by  an 
active  adversary  of  his  doctrine,  a  clergyman  of  the 
Swedish  Church.      In   receiving  so  great  a  com- 
mission, in  submitting  his  faculties  to  open  bodily 
into  the  spiritual  world,  in  the  presence,  and  often 
collision,  of  two  worlds  in  his  mind  and  his  senses, 
it  is  not  possible  that  his  bearing  could  be  under- 
stood by  the  people  about  him,  or  that  his  enemies 
should  not  attribute  the  unusual  in  him  to  madness. 
If  it  were  granted  that  all  his  state  were  true,  it 
could  not  look  sane  to  this  worlds  prejudice  and 
sensuality.      Besides  which,  no  state,  except  to  a 
cruel   mind,   binds  any  man  beyond  its  own  con- 
tinuance.      If  phrenitis   had   stricken   Shakespear 
just  before  he  produced  Hamlet,  no  one  but  a  mad 
doctor  who  would  retain  all  good  patients  for  life 
under  lock  and  key  for  pay,  would  aver  that  the 
Hamlet  and  all  the  series  of  subsequent  plays  were 
the  result  of  the  brain  fever.      If  they  exhibited 
plain  traces  of  derangement  to  non- specialists  who 
had  no  interest  in  coining  insanity  into  cash,  the 
fever  might  have  had  to  do  with  it;  but  if  they  were 
more  sane  to  the  end,  the  fever  would  be  forgotten 
by  the  critics,  or  be  adjudged  to  be  itself  a  fight 
with  some  insanity  which  had  hitherto  marred  the 
brain,  and  was  then  victoriously  put  aside.     It  may 
be  doubted  whether  this  victory  over  some  deep  self- 
love,  standing  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  career  for 
men,  ever  happens  without  a  great  pause  of  nature, 
and  shuddering  of  her  old  privileges  and  organs. 
The  most  of  men,  especially  mad  doctors,  can  bear 
change  so  little,  that  a  new  idea  makes  them  mad 
for  a  time,  until  they  can  cushion  and  ignore  it. 
And  yet  here,  regardless  of  their  own  experience. 


364      SWEDENBORG  FOUNDS  A  NEW  SANITY. 


I 


they  expect  the  most  capacious  intellect  that  history 
can  produce,  to  stand  without  a  stagger  when  all  its 
state  is  overthrown,  and  the  Lord  visible  in  Divine 
Humanity  confronts  it,  and  says  in  it,  ^*  I  make  all 
things  new." 

Fie  upon  the  poor  mad  doctors  that  they  do  not 
better  remember  and  correlate  their  own  little  ex- 
perience with  the  vast  case  of  the  opening  of  a 
Swedenborg!  Fie  upon  a  medical  profession,  which 
cannot  admit  a  ray  of  new  light  without  tetanus,  or 
swallow  a  drop  of  the  waters  of  new  truth  without 
a  spasm  of  hydrophobia ! 

There  is  indeed  every  fact  to  show  that  Sweden- 
borg grew  continuously  more  sane  from  his  youth 
upwards,  and  more  addicted  to  practical  ends  of  use. 
In  his  earlier  works,  before  his  manifest  divine  com- 
mission, there  is  the  ambition  of  an  easily  great  man 
delighting  and  breathing  in  his  power.  There  is 
mighty  speculation  in  quest  of  truth.  If  it  were 
possible,  there  is  a  noble  selfhood ;  eloquence  second 
to  none  in  the  Latin  language,  and  clothing  thoughts 
that  traverse  physics  only  to  "wander  through 
eternity."  In  his  theological  works,  this  ceases; 
there  is  no  transition,  but  a  new  plane,  of  style ; 
extreme  unadorned  simplicity;  imagination  utterly 
gone  before  spiritual  reality;  imagination  gone  out 
of  the  very  words,  which  carry  only  spiritual  in- 
tellectual forces  adequate  to  bring  down  the  new 
truths  to  mankind.  The  style  is  calm  and  trans- 
lucent. There  is  no  more  speculation,  or  love  of 
truth  for  its  own  sake,  but  commanding  statements 
of  truth  for  the  sake  of  good.  There  is  not,  so  far 
as  the  present  writer  is  aware,  a  paragraph  of 
Swedenborg's  theological  works,  whether  published 
by  himself,  or  posthumous,  that  has  any  other  end 


' 


SWEDENBORG  FOUNDS  A  NEW  SANITY,      365 

and  object  than  to  make  men  and  women  more 
personally  responsible  for  their  actions  here,  and 
thuswise  more  capable  of  receiving  happiness  here- 
after. Self-help  as  a  condition,  and  the  Lord's  help 
not  before  but  afterwards,  is  a  sum  and  substance  of 
his  writings. 

^  The  truth  is  that  in  Swedenborg's  case,  the  medi- 
cine of  lunacy,  extended  as  it  is  to  various  parts  of 
psychology,  has  fallen  upon  a  stone  which  breaks  it 
in  two,  and  if  care  be  not  taken,  the  stone  will  fall 
upon  it,  and  grind  it  to  powder.     It  is  already  in 
two   in   this   wise.      Hitherto   it   has  covered   the 
ground  not  only  of  w^hether  persons  are  in  a  fit  state 
to  take  care  of  themselves  and  their  property,  and  to 
be  safe  neighbours  to  other  people,  but  also  of  what 
mental  and  spiritual  beliefs,  and  actions  and  deter- 
minations  founded  upon  them,  are  fit  to  be  tolerated 
in  legalized  society.      Medicine  grasps  ambitiously 
at  both  these  very  difierent  branches  of  power.     The 
first  part  is  its  legitimate  walk,  and  it  is  fairly  in  the 
witness-box  there,  though  not  in  the  judgment-seat; 
and  when  the  insane  have  fallen  out  of  domestic  and 
civil  life,    they   belong  to  the  love   of  the   state; 
the  heads  of  asylums  should  be  wise  laymen  ap- 
pointed by  the  state;  there  ought  to  be  no  motives 
of  income  attached  to  their  keeping,  but  salaried 
medical  superintendence  under  lay  superintendence; 
as  it  is  in  the  United  States.     Insanity  should  be  no 
merchandise,  and  greed  lay  no  speculative  hand  upon 
it.     Thus  specialism,  always  a  snare  to  itself,  and  a 
danger  to  others,  should  be  limited  by  common  sense; 
but  with  all  this,  medical  men  are  necessarily  in  evi- 
dence, and   in   attendance,  in   practically  manifest 
insanity.      But   with   regard  to   the   second   walk, 
through  the  cases  of  new  and  therefore  necessarily 


I 


I 


f 


\ 


366       SWEDENBORG  FOUNDS  A  NEW  SANITY. 

singular  beliefs,  experiences,  peculiar  powers,  open- 
ings of  the  spiritual  world,  healing  by  prayer,  and 
spiritual  things  generally,  medical  men  have  no  more 
to  do  with  these  things  than  shoemakers  have. 
Truly  all  men  have  to  do  with  such  things,  but  only 
in  making  up  their  minds  one  way  or  another  about 
them.  They  have  power  over  them,  in  themselves, 
and  can  accept  or  reject  them  if  they  please;  but  of 
public  power  they  ought  not  to  have,  and  in  time 
will  not  have,  one  finger.  Prejudiced  from  their 
legitimate  point  of  view  of  abnormal  states  which 
are  insanities,  they  too  easily  extend  it  to  all  states 
out  of  their  very  small  norm,  and  adjudge  these  as 
insanities  also.  Madness  with  them  is  the  disease  of 
the  day,  and  they  hunt  for  it  everywhere;  just  as  a 
cancer  specialist  said  to  the  writer,  '^  Cancer  is  the 
disease  of  the  day."  Let  them  therefore  be  limited; 
for  their  hands  are  tamed  to  the  dye  they  work  in, 
and  they  want  the  restraint  of  law  to  keep  them 
within  bounds  with  real  and  convalescent  lunatics, 
and  to  fence  them  in  and  away  from  new  spiritual 
powers  granted  from  time  to  time  to  mankind,  and 
which  they  would  ignorantly  imprison  and  stamp 
out  if  England  would  let  them. 

It  is  incontestable  that  if  mad  doctors,  and  medical 
orthodoxy,  as  we  have  them  now,  could  have  had 
their  own  way  at  the  time,  the  leading  persons  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments  would  have  been  in 
asylums;  the  Psalms  and  the  Prophets  would  not 
have  been  written;  the  Lords  life  on  earth  would 
have  been  stopped  in  His  early  years;  not  a  miracle 
of  His  healings  would  have  been  permitted  to  be 
done,  or  if  done,  would  have  transpired;  but  the 
great  seal  of  medical  orthodoxy  would  have  been  set 
upon  the  grave  of  divine  revelation.     In  fact  it  was 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


367 


SO  set,  for  the  orthodoxy  which  did  that  deed  was 
embracive;  though  when  the  stone  was  rolled  away 
by  the  angel,  the  broken  little  seal  is  not  mentioned. 
Medicine  is  now  attempting  the  same  sealing  with 
another  revelation  in  the  person  of  Swedenborg. 
But  he  too,  with  civil  and  religious  liberty  for  the 
angel  who  rolls  away  his  medical  gravestone,  rises 
upwards,  and  survives  in  unimpeachable  sanity,  and 
will  be  regarded  in  time  as  the  first  of  the  fathers  of 
a  new  healing.  In  the  meantime,  his  life  and  works 
break  the  political  case  of  lunacy  in  two;  into  the 
lunacy  of  patients,  which  it  belongs  to  the  doctors  to 
treat,  and  the  state  to  hold;  and  into  the  lunacy  of 
the  doctors  themselves,  who  require  to  be  confined 
by  law  and  public  opinion  within  their  own  boun- 
daries of  externed  attendance  on  asylums.  The  third 
term,  the  spiritual  man,  and  his  ever  new  life  and 
liberty,  triumphs  out  of  all  question. 


XCVIII. 


PRAYER   AND   MIRACLE. 


A  crucifying  test  on  a  kindred  subject  has  been 
proposed  by  an  eminent  surgeon.  It  is  this. 
Whereas  the  prayer  of  faith  has  been  said  to  heal 
the  sick,  let  a  prayer-ward  in  a  hospital  be  devoted 
to  one  set  of  patients,  and  an  orthodox  ward  for 
treatment  be  devoted  to  a  second  set;  and  let  the 
result  be  taken  as  conclusive  for,  or  against,  prayer; 
against  which,  by  the  by,  the  proposer  concludes 
from  the  beginning.  The  plan  has  diflSculties,  and 
for  him,  dangers.     He  presupposes  for  the  occasion, 


368 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


\ 


that  the  prayer  of  faith  is  so  common  an  exercise 
that  it  may  be  offered  up  by  any  person  almost  in- 
differently :  whereas  prayer  for  the  good  of  others 
with  a  practical  belief  that  it  will  be  answered,  is  at 
least  as  rare  as  large  rubies.     Moreover,  the  faith 
may  be  well  intentioned,  but  may  not  be  enough. 
The  history  upon  which  all  such  prayer  proceeds  is 
the  New  Testament,  which  records  the  cure  of  many 
grievous  diseases  by  the  Lord  Himself,  and  a  pro- 
mise  that   under  conditions  His  method  shall  be 
extended   to  His   followers.      But  among  the   fol- 
lowers there  was  a  case  where  their  prayer  was  of 
no  avail :  a  case  of  possession  of  which  He  said, 
''  This  kind  goeth  not  out  but  by  prayer  and  fasting." 
An  unselfish  life,  a  skill  of  preparation  for  the  prayer, 
much  more  difficult  to  obtain  than  any  medical  quali- 
fication, was  here  postulated  as  the  condition  of  the 
prayer  treatment.      Without  this  the  prayer-ward 
would  afford  no  trial,  and  the  failure  of  the  prayers 
would   conclude  nothing.      Moreover,  the    motives 
imposed  upon  the  prayer- ward  would  not  be  divinely 
single,  but  professional  and  double;  they  would  be 
entered  by  competition  from  the  love  of  power,  which 
despoils  the  direct  humanity  of  every  calling.     They 
would   have  in  them  anxiety  for  victory,  and  not 
simple  love  of  healing  suffering  men  and  women. 
The  heads  of  that  house  would  hate  prayer,  most  of 
all  if  it  cured,  and  attribute  the  cure  to  nature  and 
fancy.     Such  an  experiment  may  indeed  be  made, 
but  for  these  reasons,  it  is  null  and  void.     And  it 
could  have  no  correlation  with,  or  reaction  of  dis- 
proof over,  the  early  Christian  times. 

A  somewhat  parallel  thing  was  tried,  if  th^ 
author  remembers  rightly,  by  Andral  with  regard  to 
homoeopathy.     He  heard   of  that  then  new  treat- 


FRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


369 


ment,  and  resolved  to  test  it  practically.     He  de- 
voted a  ward  in  a  Paris  hospital  to  the  trial.     He 
went  round  the  ward,  and  gave  each  patient  what 
he  conceived  to  be  the  right  homoeopathic  remedy 
according  to  the  book,  for  his   special   case.     He 
recorded  the  results,  and  found  that  they  were  vir- 
tually nil.     And  he  concluded  accordingly  against 
homoeopathy.     In   this   he   assumed   that  homoeo- 
pathy,  which   is  certainly   a  more  difficult   art   to 
acquire   and   practise   than  the  old   medicine,  had 
been  mastered   by   himself  instantaneously.     Also 
that  it  had  been  so  mastered  in  the  face  of  motives 
conflicting  with  it  mortally  in  his  own  mind ;  and 
under   these  circumstances  had  a  fair  trial.     And 
that  the  requisite  perseverance,  impossible  in  such  a 
case,  had  been  given  to  the  treatment.     The  truth 
is,  there  was  no  homoeopathy  in  the  events,  but  only 
the  selfhood  of  the  professor.     In  the  prayer-treat- 
ment proposed  by  the  surgeon,  there  lies  the  same 
regnant  quality. 

So  you  may  see  a  railway  navigator  versed  in  the 
clay  of  an  embankment,  provide  himself  with  sculp- 
tor s  tools,  and  make  images  of  men  out  of  his 
familiar  materials;  and  not  liking  the  look  of  his 
creatures,  yet  never  blame  himself,  but  proclaim  that 
the  art  itself  is  a  failure,  and  that  he  has  no  opinion 
of  sculpture. 

The  New  Medicine. — It  is  therefore  important  in 
regard  to  things  out  of  the  common  rule,  as  spiritual 
powers  coming  down  into  nature  are,  to  acknowledge 
their  conditions;  and  to  notice  if  those  conditions 
are  extant  at  the  present  day.  The  condition  of  the 
Lord's  miracles  was  a  divine  man,  who  performed 
them  as  spiritual  uses  which  could  not  be  done  with- 
out for  His  ends.     At  the  time  of  their  doing.  He 

2  A 


370 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


371 


\ 


was  penetrating  heaven,  and  subjugating  hell,  and 
his  victories  went  out  into  suffering  humanity,  and 
cleared  away  disease  from  their  path.  They  were 
correspondences  and  ultimations  of  similar  spiritual 
victories,  and  hence  inevitable  correlations.  But 
these  conditions  are  far  from  the  wards  of  London 
hospitals.  Yet  he  promised  similar  powers  to  his 
regenerated  followers.  The  practical  corollary  seems 
to  be,  that  the  state  of  medicine  will  mark  by  ulti- 
mate signs  the  state  of  the  Lord's  New  Church  in 
mankind.  That  colleges  and  privileged  bodies  will 
less  and  less  include  it.  That  all  tendency  towards 
the  methods  of  the  New  Testament  will  be  accepted 
as  instalments  of  a  passing  day.  Therefore  that 
gentleness  of  every  kind  will  supersede  force.  That 
courage  and  perseverance  with  simple  things  will 
forbid  casual  violence  and  recklessness.  That  the 
prayer  of  faith  will  come  into  the  sick-room  on  the 
quiet  feet  of  humility,  with  heaven's  raised  right 
hand  of  power.  That  its  exercise  will  be  a  twofold 
experiment,  on  the  patient,  and  on  the  minister,  and 
reveal  the  spiritual  condition  of  the  latter  especially, 
and  give  him  his  daily  diploma.  That  ultimately, 
regenerating  personality  will  be  recognized  as  a 
special  power,  and  will  communicate  health,  not  from 
itself,  but  by  a  divine  fiat.  This  seems  to  be  the 
road  from  the  present  gross  systems;  and  this  the 
goal  to  which  not  those  systems,  but  God's  providence 
in  and  over  health,  is  tending. 

A  few  words  may  here  be  said  on  prayer  itself. 
The  atheists  have  unexperimentally  assumed,  that  the 
prayer  of  a  man  who  believes  in  God  and  loves  Him, 
can  be  tested  and  measured  as  a  fact  and  as  a  power 
by  a  mind  which  resolutely  believes  in  no  god. 
That  is  a  physical  mistake.     The  two  brains  in  the 


region  of  prayer  have  nothing  in  common.     They 
intimately  repudiate  each  other.     Prayer,  constant 
prayer,  in  a  mind,  when  answered  below  by  a  corre- 
sponding life  in  the  day's  work,  opens  the  mind  to 
God,   and  in  full  trust  communes  with  Him  as  a 
divine  friend,  and  brings  on,  and  brings  down,  new 
states  in  that  mind  which  alter  it  entirely.     It  is  as 
real  a  labour  and  toil  as  any  work  of  the  hands,  and 
the  whole  machinery  of  conscious  existence  is  the 
field  w^hich  it  engineers.     If  a  railway  embankment 
is  true,  worked  by  men  out  of  common  clay,  vast  pro- 
longed states  of  ordinary  mind  raised  here  and  levelled 
there  by  earnest  prayers,  are  also  true  of  the  outer 
faculties  manipulated  by  the  inner;    of  the  grosser 
man  reconstructed  by  the  finer;    and  of  the  inner 
man  soliciting  the  mercy  of  the  divine  man.     The 
effects  of  prayer  are  therefore  correlated  in  their 
reality  with    all   good  brain-work   and  handiw^ork. 
The  prayer  that  moves  mountains  is  not  ejaculation 
with  no  antecedent  life,  but  exalted  life  from  foregone 
divine  inw  ard  engineering.     Prayer  is  also  correlate 
Avith  all  human  want   and  mercy.     Only  it  stands 
alone  as  opening  us  in   regeneration   to   the  very 
succour  of  God.     The  atheists  deny  these  positions; 
the  Word  affirms  them.     Happily  the  arsenal  of  the 
two  is  incommensurate;  there  is  infinite  aflSrmation 
possible,  and  actual;  and  faith,  however  feeble  and 
unenlightened  now,  gradual  in  its  formation  like  the 
world,  has  God  for  its  Father,  and  the  future  of  the 
world  in  w^iich  to  put  resistance  aside,  and  to  come 
into  its  kingdom. 

It  is  often  said  and  thought  that  spiritual  exer- 
cises cannot  alter  the  laws  .  of  nature,  and  that 
prayer  cannot  influence  Him  who  is  the  same 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever.     Neither  of  these 


372 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


positions  is  practically  true  as  an  argument  against 
prayer.  In  the  first  place  there  is  no  experience 
about  either  excepting  that  which  is  extant  in  the 
Bible,  and  in  religious  history;  and  that  experience 
denies  both  these  negatives.  The  history  of  un- 
faith  contains  no  miracles  ;  it  also  possesses  no  mind 
towards  them  ;  not  even  a  common  critical  mind  ; 
for  it  stands  back  to  back  to  the  history  of  faith. 
Say  rather  it  stands  foot  to  foot,  and  reacts 
against  the  possibility  of  the  fruits  of  faith  with 
constant  exact  resolutions  of  the  will.  We  have 
therefore  to  learn  from  the  Bible  what  the  case  is 
about  miracles  by  and  from  the  Divine  Man,  and  to 
study  the  sense  in  which  they  are  alterations  of  the 
laws  of  nature.  Clearly  no  divine  miracle  is  a 
breach  of  the  divine  order.  If  it  exists  in  nature,  it 
is  a  suspension  of  her  order  in  personal  presence 
of  a  higher  law.  Let  us  take  an  inward  miracle  as 
an  example.  Suppose  a  mind  all  compacted  of 
selfish  motives,  and  working  for  selfish  ends.  The 
objects  of  such  a  mind  are  its  laws  of  nature.  It 
can  all  be  accounted  for  upon  those  laws,  and  in 
itself,  besides  those  laws,  and  itself,  there  is  nothing 
consciously  present.  The  spirit  of  God,  in  His 
mercy,  touches  the  surface  of  its  freewill,  and  a 
revelation  of  its  state,  and  a  new  perception,  is 
produced.  A  divine  little  truth  is  received  which 
contradicts  all  those  laws  of  nature,  and  perhaps  the 
smallest  and  least  vigorous  of  their  facts  is  van- 
quished for  a  moment.  A  law  of  that  mind  s 
nature  is  here  suspended  by  the  man's  obedience  to 
a  higher  law.  And  the  process  may  go  on  until 
more  or  less  of  the  ground  of  the  man  is  penetrated 
by  the  miraculous  agency  of  self-denial,  and  gained 
for  unselfishness.     The   possibility  of  the    miracle 


ERA  YER  AND  MIRACLE. 


373 


was  latent  all  the  time  in  the  fact  that  there  was 
some  vital  remainder  in  the  person  which  had  God 
near  it;  and  which  intimately  acknowledged  the 
impact  of  the  truth  from  without,  and  forced  the 
man  to  obey  it.  But  in  such  a  miracle  there  is 
neither  disorder,  nor  mystery,  for  both  of  these 
begin  to  be  abolished  by  it  in  the  character. 

The  Lord's  action  upon  earth  was  an  action  like 
this  upon  His  own  humanity,  in  organ  after  organ, 
and  in  faculty  after  faculty,  until  its  selfhood  in 
every  detail  was  abolished,  and  the  humanity  glori- 
fied. His  body,  for  divine  purposes,  became  divine. 
It  was  also  such  an  action  upon  other  men,  and 
when  their  states,  of  evil  and  disease,  conflicted 
with  it,  His  spoken  word,  and  His  right  hand,  sus- 
pended those  states.  And  it  was  such  an  action 
upon  outward  nature.  For  when  nature's  sub- 
stances and  supplies  did  not  meet  the  Lord's 
necessities,  they  were  modified  or  enlarged  by  His 
demand  to  the  measure  of  those  necessities.  His 
promise  is  that  those  who  really  follow  Him,  shall 
have  greater  powers  than  He  put  in  force.  If  they 
have  not  had  those  powers,  the  inference  is  that 
men  have  not  followed  Him.  The  substantiated 
miracle  is  in  no  way  invalidated  by  the  fact,  that 
other  men,  under  quite  different  conditions,  cannot 
enact  such  miracles.  A  church  replete  with  loaves 
and  fishes,  and  without  the  Lord  in  the  midst,  is  not 
only  different  but  alien  to  a  hungry  flock  in  the 
wilderness  with  Jesus  Christ  present.  His  disciples 
bringing  forth  the  five  small  fishes  and  two  loaves 
of  their  acknowledged  poverty,  the  want  of 
multiplication  coming  to  His  divine  heart,  which 
increased  both  the  substances  and  laws  of  nature  for 
the  need  of  His  famishing  people.  The  Lord  has 
added   divine    unselfishness    as    a  productive  and 


374 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


administrative  power  to  the  laws  of  supply;  when  it 
is  in  them,  they  are  and  will  be  in  so  far  miraculous; 
that  is  to  say,  they  will  wonderfully  suspend,  for 
divine  uses  alone,  the  fluxion  of  forms,  and  the 
course  of  events;  when  that  unselfishness  is  not 
there,  nature,  unaddressed  by  Him,  takes  the  usual 
course;  and  events  follow  in  their  fate  which  also 
is  of  His  laws,  usual  now,  not  usual  under  different 
personal  circumstances. 

The  analogue  and  correlate  of  such  miracles 
exists  in  the  very  order  and  subordination  of  nature, 
so  that  the  external  world  naturally  expects  and 
owns  them.  The  first  retreat  of  the  solar  fire  from 
its  accomplished  mission,  the  first  permitted  con- 
densation of  things,  leaves  the  mineral  kingdom 
standing  by  itself,  but  impregnated  with  the  future. 
The  vegetable  kingdom  then  appears,  with  a  higher 
law  in  it,  and  lifts  the  mineral  beyond  itself  into 
functions  marvellously  beyond  stones  and  metals. 
No  mind  educated  on  the  latter  alone  could  admit 
without  experience  the  facts  of  seed  and  growth. 
The  animal  kino^dom  comes  aofain  with  a  liiorher  law: 
and  life  lives  and  moves  where  before  it  was  rooted 
to  the  earth  and  grew,  and  would  die  of  local 
motion.  The  natural  man  comes  again  with  a 
higher  power  of  law;  the  precedent  kingdoms  are 
marvellously  wrought  into  his  body  and  his  will,  and 
subjugated  by  mental  forces  which  penetrate  and 
humanize  them.  The  process  does  not  end  here; 
the  spiritual  man  claims  a  new  kingdom;  a  new 
ascendancy;  and  introduces  laws  which  suspend  the 
previous  courses,  wants  and  selfhoods  of  mere 
nature.  He  imparts  a  new  gravitation,  not  to  earth, 
matter  and  pleasure,  but  to  God  in  daily  earthly 
duty.  The  spiritual  world  is  a  new  kingdom  again ; 
and  when  it  appears  in  nature  for  its  uses,  it  sus- 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


375 


pends  all  ordinations  below  it  in  its  own  supreme 
interest,  and  uses  them   for  its  ends.     It  does  not 
destroy  them,  as  the  vegetable  does  not  destroy  the 
mineral,  but  builds  it  into  plant  and  tree,  and  into 
functions   of  growth   and   reproduction.      If   there 
were    no    spiritual    world,    the   series    of    natural 
miracles,  vegetable,  animal,    and    human,    imposed 
upon  the  mineral  common-place,  would  be  complete 
in   the   ordinary  mortal   man.     But  as  there  is  a 
spiritual  world,  it  is  not  possible  that  its  manifesta- 
tions and  subjugations  should  do  other  than  suspend 
the  laws  of  nature  where  it  touches  them.     Its  laws 
are  those  of  instantaneous    creation;  coming  down 
into  the  theatre  of  nature,  they  become  laws  of  instan- 
taneous creation  there  also.     Just  as  the  vegetable 
law  and  personality  coming  by  seed  into  minerals, 
make  them  vegetable ;  and  as  the  human  law  coming 
into  horses,  cows,  and  sheep  makes  them  domestic. 
The   anti-miracle   men  do  not  know  that   there   is 
a  world  of  laws  pressing  upon  the  heart  and  lungs  of 
nature,  and  aspiring  to  raise  it  into  new  breaths;  they 
think  that  a  miracle-worker  is  some  deluded  private 
will  juggling  with  things;  whereas  the  Sun  of  suns, 
and  Jehovah  therein,  is  the  pressure  behind  divine 
miracles ;  and  the  spiritual  world  forceful  upon  the 
natural   attests  the  pressure  by  usual  miracles  of 
creation  in  every  sphere. 

The  extent  of  miracle,  depending  as  it  obviously 
does  upon  its  divine  uses,  finds  also  a  correlation  and 
as  it  were  a  common  sense  in  the  impregnation  of  the 
lower  kingdoms  of  nature  by  the  higher.  The  seed 
in  the  soil,  which  is  to  be  the  marvel  of  the  soil, 
does  not  build  up  all  the  ground  into  plants  and 
trees,  but  a  very  small  part  of  it;  as  the  soil  itself  is 
a  small  film  on  the  great  mineral  ball  of  earth.     So 


37^ 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


the  next  kingdom,  the  animal,  though  mainly  living 
on  the  vegetable,  lives  in  it  but  does  not  consume  it; 
or  the  animal  would  perish  by  having  eaten  its  own 
basis  of  support,  l^or  does  man,  who  consumes 
and  modifies  what  is  beneath  him,  take  his  food,  or 
extend  his  power,  so  as  to  be  destructive,  but  while 
cultivating  all  and  feeding  upon  all,  and  modifying 
all,  he  introduces  husbandry  and  planting,  and  reno- 
vates the  fields  on  which  he  lives  by  agricultural 
arts.  Thus  no  danger  but  perpetuity  and  increase, 
arise  from  the  subjugation  of  the  lower  planes  by 
the  higher,  and  from  the  appearance  of  the  higher 
and  less  material  laws,  apparitionally,  in  the  lower. 
And  the  case  is  the  same  with  the  spiritual  kingdom, 
obviously  more  vast  than  all  below  it;  more  vast  for 
two  reasons  :  1.  It  is  nearer  to  the  Lord,  who  is 
infinite  and  eternal;  he  clothes  Himself  with  it, 
and  it  represents  dimension  in  its  essence  and  first 
magnitude;  a  dimension  of  which  space  is  the 
contracted  copy.  2.  Humanly,  this  kingdom 
receives  all  ages  and  nations  of  men  and  women 
into  its  arms,  and  is  therefore,  for  its  ends  of 
use,  as  much  bigger  than  nature,  as  all  ages  now 
and  for  ever  onwards  are  bigger  than  one  genera- 
tion. This  great  kingdom  comes  upon  and  in 
nature,  or  rather  upon  and  in  the  natural  man,  as  he 
comes  upon  the  animal,  the  vegetable,  and  the 
mineral ;  and  its  pressure  is  personal  revelation  ; 
and  personal  miracle  if  needed  when  a  new  power  is 
to  be  instituted.  Even  from  all  below,  it  might  be 
expected  and  foretold  that  it  would  do  so.  It  is  in 
the  order  of  nature  that  it  should.  Its  revelation, 
and  legislation  over  men,  are  not  in  the  order  of 
nature,  until  human  nature  is  subdued  to  it.  That 
is,  because  every  kingdom  has  its  own  laws,  and 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


377 


these  have  their  own  manifestation.  There  is 
nothinsr  more  alien  to  the  nature  of  man  in  the 
spiritual  world  at  any  time  when  the  Lord  pleases 
being  manifested  in  him  and  through  him,  than 
there  is  to  the  mineral  in  the  vegetable  being 
manifested  in  it  and  through  it;  or  than  there  is  to 
the  vegetable  in  the  animal  moving  through  its 
forms.  Each  higher  kingdom  may  be  said  to  live 
and  move  in  the  awe  and  astonishment  of  the  king- 
doms below  it.  But  man,  having  freewill,  has  the 
power  of  denying]  the  unselfish  kingdom  above 
himself;  whereas  the  lower  natures  are  bound  to 
accept  their  lords,  and  carry  them  out  into  uses. 
This  is  why  man  of  to-day  will  have  no  miracles 
unless  he  does  them  himself.  Now  he  cannot  do 
them  himself,  because  self  is  common  human  clay, 
a  genius  always  dying  out.  It  is  the  Lord  moving 
in  the  spiritual  world  upon  the  natural,  who  alone 
does  miracles;  and  this,  when  they  are  needed. 

Physicists,  who  are  wardens  of  the  order  of  nature, 
and  would  mend  and  patch  any  "rendings  of  the 
skyey  roof,"  lest  their  world  be  cracked,  may  be  con- 
soled against  the  probability  that  any  large  part  of 
her  domain  will  at  present  be  the  theatre  of  the 
manifestation  of  spiritual  laws.  Powers  and  matters 
are  obverse  in  nature.  Mineral  matter,  and  aerial, 
and  etherial,  are  immense  compared  to  vegetation ; 
and  yet  were  it  spread  out,  and  vegetation  could  get 
upon  it,  all  would  be  lifted  into  one  great  Yggdrasil 
or  world  tree.  But  the  fire  inside  matter,  for  divine 
ends,  protects  it  in  its  globes.  And  life,  if  it  could 
compass  this  Yggdrasil,  would  not  merely,  as  it  is 
said  in  Edda,  gnaw  its  roots  and  prey  upon  its 
branches  and  its  top,  but  would  swallow  it  up. 
Animal  life   however   is  proportionally  limited  as 


378 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


379 


»> 


compared  to  vegetable ;  it  is  more  destructible  than 
plant  life;  it  destroys  itself,  and  the  course  of  things 
destroys  it.  Its  power  is  immense  :  its  weight  of 
matter  is  relatively  small.  So  the  human  race 
has  in  it  a  love  of  possession  and  domination  which 
would  send  man  into  the  centre  of  the  earth,  and 
over  the  solar  system,  if  he  could  get  there;  and 
''mine  and  thine"  would  parcel  out  the  abyss  and 
the  firmament  into  freehold,  leasehold,  and  copyhold 
estates.  But  the  weight  of  things  mercifully  says 
nay.  Vast  as  the  direct  empire  of  man  over  nature 
is,  it  is  as  nothing  to  nature  herself,  but  merely  crops 
the  summits  of  her  grass-fields.  The  spiritual  world, 
in  all  late  history,  perhaps  in  all  history,  likewise 
merely  touches  the  summits  of  human  personality  and 
faculty,  reveals  itself  to  them,  appears  in  them,  and 
so  far  as  they  will,  modifies  them;  but  does  not 
tyrannically  invade  them,  or  do  more  than  converse, 
sometimes  by  miracle,  with  their  freewill.  This 
freewill  is  deflected  and  correlated  all  the  way  down ; 
in  the  fierceness  of  the  undomesticable  animal ;  in 
the  untamed  luxuriance  of  plant  and  forest  and  the 
great  elbows  of  growth;  in  the  inscrutable  central 
earth ;  and  in  the  distance  of  suns  and  planets.  It  is 
forced  to  permit  the  connexion  of  things,  by  which 
one  kingdom  lays  hold  of  another,  and  the  broods  of 
nature  are  born;  but  the  greater  part  of  each  king- 
dom possesses  itself,  and  is  not  directly  meddled  with 
by  its  superiors. 

These  things  are  attested  on  the  map,  and  the 
small  extent  geographically  of  the  theatre  of  revela- 
tion, in  point  of  fact,  the  Holy  Land,  shows  that  the 
hand  of  God  touches  the  creation  directly  on  a  small 
point,  and  with  ordered  intent.  The  Holy  Land  for 
long  ages  had  been  the  theatre  of  the  church  and  of 


the  written  Word;  it  was  introduced  into  the  frame- 
work of  divine  correspondence,  and  being  represen- 
tatively, not  really,  a  divine  land,  there  the  Lord  was 
born  as  it  were  into  the  externals  of  His  own  Word. 
It  was  in  one  family  and  in  one  land  only  that  this 
contact  of  God  with  man  took  place. 

This  smallness  of  contact  is  also  visible  in  the 
events  of  human  life.  There  is  hardly  a  man,  if  he  is 
fair  to  himself,  who  has  not  some  experiences  in  his 
own  person  which  belong  to  the  supernatural  degree; 
hardly  a  family  Avhich  has  not  well-verified  accounts 
of  visions  bevond  dreams,  of  inward  admonitions,  of 
voices,  of  signs  before  death,  of  apparitions,  and  the 
like,  among  its  members.  But  such  things  in  the  sum 
of  life,  though  influential,  are  small  in  their  extent; 
and  out  of  command  of  those  w^ho  experience  them. 
They  come  and  go,  and  are  at  present  unaccountable. 
It  seems  that  the  spiritual  world,  the  life  of  which  is 
God's  providence,  touches  with  these  rare  and  sparse 
and  yet  universal  events  all  human  creatures,  and 
keeps  up,  by  a  delicate  nexus  of  superior  rays,  an 
involuntary  sympathetic  system  of  recognition  of  a 
life  after  death;  excepting  in  those  who  carefully 
hate  and  extinguish  the  rays.  But  the  touch  is  so 
small  compared  to  the  mass,  that  the  freewill  can 
do  what  it  likes,  and  subsist  either  in  denial  or  in 
afiirmation. 

A  deduction  may  be  that  the  upper  planes  of  crea- 
tion are  always  vaster  in  power  than  the  lower;  that 
the  spiritual  is  solidly  mightier  and  more  extended 
than  the  natural ;  and  that,  looked  at  from  above 
downwards,  creation  is  a  pyramidal  spire  diminishing 
to  a  point,  which  point  is  matter,  space  and  time, 
with  the  men  and  women  that  they  contain  for  the 
day.      Also   that    the   higher  planes    are  divinely 


38o 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


restricted  from  acting  with  force  upon  the  lower 
except  by  induction  of  correspondences  and  unper- 
ceived  influx ;  and  excepting  also  by  suspensions  of 
natural  laws  where  such  are  functionally  needed  to 
preserve  the  integrity  and  renew  the  life  of  the  whole. 
Revelation,  the  Word,  the  incarnation,  spiritual 
manifestations  universal,  are  such  connexions;  they 
are  above  nature  and  creation,  and  they  exist. 

Prayer  stands  recorded  as  a  considerable  cause  and 
means  of  divine  interlocutions,  and  historically,  as 
well  as  in  the  Word,  nothing  is  better  attested  than 
its  efficacy  when  the  conditions  of  efficacy  are  pre- 
sent. Yet  scientists  think  to-day,  that  if  there  be  a 
God,  He  is  unalterable,  that  He  changes  His  face 
for  no  solicitation,  that  consequently  all  events  take 
their  natural  course,  and  that  prayer  is  a  nullity  as 
an  appeal  to  the  divine  nature.  They  say  it  may 
alter  the  praying  man,  but  by  no  means  the  great 
Being  prayed  to.  Certainly  it  does  alter  him  who 
prays,  and  alters  him  often  supremely,  changing 
despair  into  hope,  confusion  into  steady  light,  timi- 
dity into  confidence,  cowardice  into  courage,  hatred 
into  love,  and  the  genius  of  compromise  into  the 
spirit  of  martyrdom.  In  short,  it  makes  men  of  those 
who  were  not  men,  it  changes  ignoble  conditions  into 
the  highest  figures  and  occasions  which  the  world 
has  seen.  And  always,  in  the  very  height  of  these, 
the  utterance  is,  "  Not  unto  us.  Lord,  not  unto  us, 
but  unto  Thy  holy  name  be  the  praise."  The  inspi- 
ration of  the  successful  prayer  state  is,  that  it  is  not 
a  success  of  the  art  of  the  self-hood,  not  a  pious  fraud 
of  ego  practised  upon  ego,  but  a  divine  gate  between 
the  Lord  and  man  opened  by  the  human  prayer. 
That  He  stands  at  the  door  and  knocks.  When 
Jesus  prayed  in  His  dire  temptation,  an  angel  was 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE, 


381 


present  strengthening  Him;  a  visible  supernatural 
minister  and  form  of  the  Father.  It  is  therefore 
plain,  from  all  the  facts  alleged  in  the  case,  that 
prayer,  as  a  benefit  and  a  blessing,  and  as  a  wonder- 
worker when  needed,  does  not  belong  to  the  self- 
hood, but  is  a  real  relation  appointed  between  God 
and  man;  and  that  its  masterly  virtues  do  not  stand, 
or  subsist,  upon  the  platform  of  human  delusion. 
Virtue  comes  out  of  the  hem  of  its  garments,  and 
virtue  does  not  come  from  the  person  of  sham. 

There  is  no  experience  to  contradict  this;  no  pro- 
fessor praying  as  a  dodge  has  ever  bettered  his  case, 
or  proved  his  point;  though  it  is  on  record  that 
scoffing  has  been  overmastered  by  prayer,  and  an 
altered  mind  come  to  the  man  on  his  knees.  For 
the  divine  mercy  loses  no  occasion  to  regenerate. 
In  this  case  it  is  not  the  imposture  which  succeeds, 
but  the  imposture  which  recedes  like  a  beaten  demon 
before  a  new  point  of  sincerity  opened,  with  some 
permission  of  his  own,  in  the  praying  man. 

But  is  it  true  in  any  good  sense  that  the  Lord  is 
unalterable?  To  say  that  He  has  created  the  world 
and  its  laws,  and  that  those  laws  are  permanent; 
and  that  the  whole  goes  on  now  as  a  vast  working 
machine  without  Him,  is  to  ignore  the  history  of  all 
religions,  and  the  experience  and  minds  of  their 
votaries;  and  simply  to  attend  to  natural  and 
physical  sequences  of  things.  It  puts  whatever  is 
truly  human  out  of  court.  Moreover  it  is  a  mere 
hypothesis,  not  suggested  by  nature,  and  repulsive 
to  theology.  There  is  no  experience,  and  no  likeli- 
hood, of  laws  enacted  by  an  intellect,  going  on  when 
that  intellect,  in  this  case,  all  intellect,  has  abstracted 
itself,  and  is  averted  from  the  laws.  Such  laws  are 
fetishes.     The  honest  meaning  of  the  thought  is, 


382 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


that  there  is  no  God.     But  assuming  the  sum,  not 
the  half,  of  things,  religion  and  nature,  God  is  the 
Author  of  both.     His  laws  in   nature  are  for  ex- 
istence.      His   religion   in   nature   is   for  heavenly 
existence,  in  the  salvation  of  the  human  race.  Reason, 
by   Him   opened,  attests   that   in  Himself  He   is 
infinite  and  eternal,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and 
for  ever.     But  he  does  not  exist  only  in  Himself; 
He  has  spoken  creation  into  being;  and  spoken  the 
Word  to  man  to  guide  his  being.     He  has  connected 
man  to  Himself  by  creation  and  revelation.     On  the 
side  which  he  turns  to  man,  called  love  and  mercy, 
He  alters  his  face  to  every  condition  of  his  creature. 
He  would  be  no  Lord  if  He  did  not  govern,  no 
supremely  wise  Lord  unless  He  governed  according 
to  the  momentaneous  state  of  His  subjects.     He 
would  be  a  mineral,  not  a  deity,  unless  He  were  in 
rapport  with  the  affections  and  needs  of  His  people. 
God   alters   every   moment,   or   He  would  not   be 
unalterably   wise   and  unalterably  loving.      Every 
perpetuated  law  is  an  everlasting  alteration  according 
to   the   circumstances   of  the    case.      The   sum   of 
instantaneous    alterations    is   the    law   in   process. 
There  is  no  law  in  statement  but  the  divine  wisdom, 
and  circumstances  are  its  field :  man  makes  formulas, 
but  nature  is  not  ruled  by  formulas,  though  pieces  of 
her  may  be  skilfully  brought  under  them  for  a  time 
by  human  minds.     The  course  of  nature  is  according 
to  the  statesmanship  of  the  Lord.     He  is  present  to 
every  human   mind,    especially  in    its   depths,    its 
struggles,  and  its  troubles;  and  continually  workino^, 
by  influences  and  events,  to  lead  and  open  it  to 
Himself.     He  is  the  brain  of  the  brain,  and  the 
heart  of  the  heart,  of  humanity.     He  is  the  only 
Man.     How  then  shall  He  not  divinely  change  to 


PRAYER  AND  MIRACLE. 


383 


meet  every  want  of  His  creatures?  In  short,  He  could 
not  be  infinite,  eternal  and  unchangeable  unless  He 
dealt  in  detail  ineffable  with  every  contingency  and 
every  course  of  mankind  and  the  world ;  unless  He 
played  upon  every  moment  of  every  mind  with  the 
stops  of  His  fingers. 

In  human  affairs,  the  higher  every  man  is  in 
function  from  true  exaltation  of  character,  the  more 
fixed  in  his  principles,  and  the  more  far-seeing,  and 
the  more  powerful  the  legislation  which  issues  from 
him,  the  more  the  action  under  him  changes  to  suit 
the  national  freedom  which  he  guides,  and  his  face  of 
each  day  is  a  modification  suited  to  the  whole  face  of 
affairs.  The  day  when  there  is  no  change  in  him  and 
from  him  according  to  the  wide  want  and  woe 
beneath  him,— that  day  he  dies  to  oflSce,  and  mortal 
change  passes  over  him.  His  public  essence  alters 
when  his  heart  curdles,  or  his  wide  hands  fall  into 
disuse.  The  simile  is  applicable  to  the  Lord,  from 
whom  all  power  comes.  He  is  the  Lord  because 
He  rules  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever;  and  in  so 
ruling  has  a  different  nexus  or  connection  with  every 
hour  since  the  first. 

Love  means  this,  and  mercy  means  it,  and  wisdom 
means  it,  and  truth  means  it.  And  these  are  the 
divine  things  which  must  be  thought  of,  or  God  is 
not  thought  of.  In  no  sense  that  metaphysicians 
and  physicians  mean,  is  God  infinite  and  eternal,  or 
God  at  all.  He  is  not  a  time  before  time,  for  there 
is  no  such  time.  He  is  not  a  space  within  space,  or 
around  space;  for  such  space  is  non-existent.  The 
scientific  brain  has  no  experience  of  infinite  and 
eternal  and  unalterable,  and  practises  self-deception 
when  it  insinuates  infinity  into  a  subject  on  the 
basis  of  a  yard-measure,  and  brings  eternity  out  of  a 


3^4 


PRA\ER  AND  MIRACLE. 


clock.  The  religious  brain  ^''  has  revelation  of  these 
things  where  otherwise  it  could  have  no  experience, 
and  faculty  to  comprehend  them  born  in  the  rational 
mind  where  revelation  meets  and  enlarges  inward 
and  outward  experience.  The  sum  is  that  the  Lord 
is  present  to  us,  and  when  we  will,  conjoined  with 
us,  by  His  divine  humanity:  and  therein,  hears 
every  prayer,  and  administers  its  efficacy,  such  as  it 
is,  according  to  the  true  need  of  the  person  praying. 

The  more  obdurate  a  man  is,  the  more  he  does  not 
alter;  and  the  harder  his  heart,  the  more  like  he  is 
to  the  unchangeable  god  of  the  physicists.  In  this 
state  wisdom  says  to  him.  Change,  and  regenerate 
thyself,  or  woe  be  unto  thee! 

Every  case  of  answer  to  prayer  stands  on  its  own 
evidence;  the  right  of  churches  to  pray  for  rain,  or 
of  persons  to  solicit  private  and  worldly  blessings, 
are  details  which  spiritual  wisdom  alone  can  settle; 
and  about  which  religious  experience  when  it  comes 
will  have  something  to  say;  but  in  the  meantime 
the  evidence  that  the  Lord  commands  prayer,  and 
hears  prayer,  and  that  prayer  is  the  first  and  highest 
act  of  the  human  mind,  which  brings  supernal  help, 
and  re-creates  man,  overbears  the  other  side  of  the 
question,  and  will  overbear  it  to  the  end.  It  will 
not  however  overcome  the  other  position,  w^hich 
stands  on  the  fancy  that  God  hears  no  prayer, 
because  it  is  not  the  intellect  but  the  heart  which 
decides  against  praying,  and  the  heart  is  un- 
searchable, and  being  the  love  and  the  will,  has  been 
made  from  the  first  unassailable,  except  by  a  new 
choice  exercised  by  the  man  himself. 

*  A  little  boy  said  to  his  mother,  "Mamma,  how  big  is  God? 
Is  He  as  big  as  an  elephant?"  "My  dear,"  she  answered,  "He  is  no 
bigger  than  you.     It  is  His  love  and  goodness  which  are  so  great." 


SOURCES  AGAINST  PR  A  YER. 


385 


This  matter  of  freewill  comes  up  continually,  and 
is  the  explanation  of  what  without  it  is  dark.  If  all 
were  mere  nature,  with  fate  flowing  through  its 
main  lines  and  its  contingencies,  God,  or  fate,  would 
then  be  everywhere,  and  prayer  would  be  but  a  drop 
in  the  unalterable  river;  but  as  freewill  is  posed, 
and  poised,  at  the  top,  man  being  that  freewill,  the 
fate  of  good,  which  comes  from  God,  is  in  man's 
hands.  Now  freewill  is  a  constant  appearance  com- 
municated, by  which  responsibility  is  appropriated, 
and  good  and  evil.  Being  given  momentaneously, 
thus  the  appearance  of  separate  identity  being  given, 
God  is  creating  and  upholding  man  in  every  second 
of  time,  and  continually  restoring  the  vanishing  free- 
will, that  conscience  may  exist,  and  regeneration  be 
possible;  and  this  goes  on  for  ever,  in  heaven,  and 
in  hell.  Hence  the  presence  of  God  is  the  life  of 
raan,  because  it  is  the  Sun  whose  ray  is  freewill;  and 
the  alterations  of  that  presence  require  to  be  as  con- 
stant as  the  man  s  varying  determinations.  Nothing 
changes  those  determinations  so  intimately  as  fervent 
prayer  from  the  will  flowing  from,  and  followed  by, 
the  beginnings  of  a  better  life.  And  hence  such 
prayer  changes  God's  action  every  moment. 

This  is  as  experimental  as  the  acquisition  of  any 
of  the  sciences.  Try  it,  and  you  will  see  :  reason 
about  it,  and  against  it,  and  do  not  try  it,  and  you 
will  not  see. 

XCIX. 

SOURCES   AGAINST   PRAYER. 


Where  do  the  scientists  find  the  God,  or  the  force, 
that  is  averse  from  prayer;  and  how  do  they  confirm 

2  B 


3^6 


SOURCES  AGAINST  PR  A  YER. 


tlieir  point  of  negation  ?  As  nature  is  unknown  to 
them  at  both  ends,  the  negation  is  not  a  scientific 
position.  Behind  protoplasm,  and  behind  the  grave, 
and  all  over  the  arc  of  life,  there  may  be  a  divine 
ordainer  and  hearer  of  prayer  for  aught  that  they 
can  say  to  the  contrary,  for  their  large  '^  unknown  " 
may  contain  Him.  They  cannot  build  here  upon 
the  God  of  Holy  Scripture,  who  is  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  for  ever;  for  they  do  not  accept 
God  from  Scripture;  the  sameness  predicated  of 
whom  is  the  assertion  of  His  permanent  divinity 
immanent  in  continual  adaptations  of  revelation 
since  the  beginning.  Moreover,  no  known  force, 
form  or  mode  of  nature,  upon  any  analysis  yet  made, 
yields  up  fate  as  a  limit;  and  yet  fate  must  be  the 
proved  upshot  of  all  things  before  a  personal  creator 
can  be  eliminated  from  the  world.  Therefore 
scientism  cannot  make  deafness  to  prayer  out  of  any 
observed  phenomena.  Nor  can  the  metaphysical 
abstraction,  the  infinite  and  eternal,  presumed  be- 
hind the  finite  and  temporal,  be  the  thing  that  does 
not  hoar  prayer;  for  it  again  is  the  unknown,  and 
cannot  »upply  a  scientific  negation,  though  it  may 
rniilly  yield  a  nejyation  of  definition.  You  may 
ronjuro  negation  into  it.  and  then  get  negation  out 
uf  it,  but  that  in  all.  Such  an  infinite  and  eternal  is 
unntMTHHJiry  nnleM  it  projoct«  the  world  and  all  that 
in  within  it  into  being,  and  uiiIchh  it  is  presned  upon 
the  hiinmn  mind;  and  if  it  dooH  theso  two  thinffs.  its 
nviitiveniKM  ti»ucheM  the  variable,  in  the  variable  in 
ouunu,  in  reacted  u|M)n  by  the  variable,  and  acts 
aroordinjf  to  it,  6tpei*ially  in  hucIi  a  profound  changer 
of  men  iM  earnest  prayer  is.  Therefore  scientism  Ixas 
no  rational  or  experimental,  no  objective  or  sub- 
j«oiiv«  ground,  for  the  hypothesis,  that  prayer  is  a 


SOURCES  AGAINST  PR  A  YER, 


387 


foolishness  of  the  uninstructed  mind.  The  belief  is 
absolutely  without  a  basis  that  the  Vulcan  or  rather 
the  volcano  of  creation  is  irresistible;  and  that  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  like  Prometheus  Bound,  is  a  puppet 
in  the  blacksmith  hands  of  Strength  and  Force.  The 
preliminary  denial  of  God  is  the  derision  of  prayer; 
and  at  this  day  specifically  the  denial  of  the  Lord  s 
Divine  Humanity.  For  His  humanity  is  tender 
and  responsive  over  His  whole  creation,  and  He  would 
appear  visibly  helpful  every  moment  if  man  s  free- 
will did  not  intervene,  and  had  not  to  be  considered 
in  the  first  place.  It  is,  as  we  have  just  said  before, 
the  conservation  of  this  freewill  that  makes  Him 
seemingly  absent  nearly  always,  and  that  renders  it 
necessary  for  man  to  strive  and  struggle  towards 
Him  before  the  will  can  be  helped  by  Him  without 
impairing  its  life.  The  wrestlings  of  prayer,  in 
which  the  new  freedom  conquers  the  old,  and  the 
new  man  is  born,  are  mighty  means  whereby  man 
helps  himself,  God  helping  him. 

In  the  circulation  of  evils  and  falses,  the 
paralysis  of  prayer  occupies  theological  as  well  as 
natural  scientism.  The  dogma  of  false  immutability 
accompanies  it  into  the  churches;  and  betokens  that 
fate,  and  not  the  Divine  Humanity,  and  man's  free- 
will, are  at  their  centre.  Prayer  loses  its  efficacy 
then,  and  falls  into  denial.  The  axioms  of  this  state 
are  written  up  on  high.  ''As  it  was  in  the  be- 
ginning, is  now,  and  ever  shall  be;"  says  the  im- 
mutable and  infallible  Papacy.  ''  Quod  semjyev,  quod 
ubique,  quod  ah  omnibus,''  say  the  arrested  churches. 
The  Protestant  doctrine  of  predestination,  and  the 
doctrine  of  philosophical  necessity,  are  stones  in 
the  same  scientific  arch,  possibly  near  its  founda- 
tions.    The  doctrine  of  scientism  that  prayer  is  a 


386 


SOURCES  AGAINST  PR  A  YER. 


their  point  of  negation  ?  As  nature  is  unknown  to 
them  at  both  ends,  the  negation  is  not  a  scientific 
position.  Behind  protoplasm,  and  behind  the  grave, 
and  all  over  the  arc  of  life,  there  may  be  a  divine 
ordainer  and  hearer  of  prayer  for  aught  that  they 
can  say  to  the  contrary,  for  their  large  "  unknown  " 
may  contain  Him.  They  cannot  build  here  upon 
the  God  of  Holy  Scripture,  who  is  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  for  ever;  for  they  do  not  accept 
God  from  Scripture;  the  sameness  predicated  of 
whom  is  the  assertion  of  His  permanent  divinity 
immanent  in  continual  adaptations  of  revelation 
since  the  beginning.  Moreover,  no  known  force, 
form  or  mode  of  nature,  upon  any  analysis  yet  made, 
yields  up  fate  as  a  limit ;  and  yet  fate  must  be  the 
proved  upshot  of  all  things  before  a  personal  creator 
can  be  eliminated  from  the  world.  Therefore 
scientism  cannot  make  deafness  to  prayer  out  of  any 
observed  phenomena.  Nor  can  the  metaphysical 
abstraction,  the  infinite  and  eternal,  presumed  be- 
hind the  finite  and  temporal,  be  the  thing  that  does 
not  hear  prayer;  for  it  again  is  the  unknown,  and 
cannot  supply  a  scientific  negation,  though  it  may 
easily  yield  a  negation  of  definition.  You  may 
conjure  negation  into  it,  and  then  get  negation  out 
of  it,  but  that  is  all.  Such  an  infinite  and  eternal  is 
unnecessary  unless  it  projects  the  world  and  all  that 
is  within  it  into  being,  and  unless  it  is  pressed  upon 
the  human  mind;  and  if  it  does  these  two  things,  its 
creativeness  touches  the  variable,  is  tlie  variable  in 
cause,  is  reacted  upon  by  the  variable,  and  acts 
according  to  it,  especially  in  such  a  profound  changer 
of  men  as  earnest  prayer  is.  Therefore  scientism  has 
no  rational  or  experimental,  no  objective  or  sub- 
jective ground,  for  tho  hypothesis,  that  prayer  is  a 


SOURCES  AGAINST  PR  A  YER, 


387 


foolishness  of  the  uninstructed  mind.  The  belief  is 
absolutely  without  a  basis  that  the  Vulcan  or  rather 
the  volcano  of  creation  is  irresistible;  and  that  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  like  Prometheus  Bound,  is  a  puppet 
in  the  blacksmith  hands  of  Strength  and  Force.  The 
preliminary  denial  of  God  is  the  derision  of  prayer; 
and  at  this  day  specifically  the  denial  of  the  Lord's 
Divine  Humanity.  For  His  humanity  is  tender 
and  responsive  over  His  whole  creation,  and  He  would 
appear  visibly  helpful  every  moment  if  man  s  free- 
will did  not  intervene,  and  had  not  to  be  considered 
in  the  first  place.  It  is,  as  we  have  just  said  before, 
the  conservation  of  this  freewill  that  makes  Him 
seemingly  absent  nearly  always,  and  that  renders  it 
necessary  for  man  to  strive  and  struggle  towards 
Him  before  the  will  can  be  helped  by  Him  without 
impairing  its  life.  The  wrestlings  of  prayer,  in 
which  the  new  freedom  conquers  the  old,  and  the 
new  man  is  born,  are  mighty  means  whereby  man 
helps  himself,  God  helping  him. 

In  the  circulation  of  evils  and  falses,  the 
paralysis  of  prayer  occupies  theological  as  well  as 
natural  scientism.  The  dogma  of  false  immutability 
accompanies  it  into  the  churches ;  and  betokens  that 
fate,  and  not  the  Divine  Humanity,  and  man  s  free- 
will, are  at  their  centre.  Prayer  loses  its  eflficacy 
then,  and  falls  into  denial.  The  axioms  of  this  state 
are  written  up  on  high.  ''As  it  was  in  the  be- 
ginning, is  now,  and  ever  shall  be;"  says  the  im- 
mutable and  infallible  Papacy.  ''  Quod  semper,  quod 
uhique,  quod  ah  onmibus"  say  the  arrested  churches. 
The  Protestant  doctrine  of  predestination,  and  the 
doctrine  of  philosophical  necessity,  are  stones  in 
the  same  scientific  arch,  possibly  near  its  founda- 
tions.    The  doctrine  of  scientism  that  prayer  is  a 


148 


388 


PERMISSIONS. 


PR  A  YER  AND  INFL  UX, 


389 


nothing,  is  a  drain  and  effluvium  from  these  fevers 
of  the  churches;  its  immovable  fate,  force  or  god, 
or  universal  all,  are  a  fancy;  but  they  are  near  its 
fountain-head,  they  feed  it  with  delirium  of  self- 
conceit,  and  grievously  invalidate  its  commerce  with 
nature. 


C. 


PERMISSIONS. 


There  is  something  stupendous  in  the  withdraAvals 
of  the  Almighty  that  every  man  may  be  a  person, 
and  find  himself  somebody.  If  we  reasoned  djyrioriy 
we  might  suppose  that  men  could  hardly  exist  who 
because  they  have  found  out  large  fields  of  small 
exactitudes  in  the  sciences,  straightway  exult  over 
Moses  and  the  prophets  and  the  Lord  Himself,  as 
bygone  mistakes,  because  they  were  not  micro- 
scopists,  protoplasmists,  and  violationists.  We 
might  have  contended  that  want  of  shame  had  no 
such  depths.  That  a  few  words  of  Scripture  in- 
finitely out  of  the  production  of  such  men,  would 
have  burnt  up  their  poor  abstractions,  and  left  them 
wailing,  ^*  Fools  that  we  are."  But  the  reverse  is  the 
fact.  Insignificance  is  allowed  to  fill  the  world, 
when  men  please;  no  force  is  used  to  compel  men 
to  recognize  the  divine  light  as  any  other  than  a 
match  to  kindle  the  wick  of  science,  and  then  to  be 
thrown  blackened  on  the  ground.  Mercy  is  in 
revelation,  and  hides  it  from  being  revelation  to 
those  who  hate  it.  Yet  it  is  the  increasing  duty  of 
all  who  think  otherwise  to  come  dow^n  to  their 
brethren   on   the   plane   of  atheistical   science;    to 


approach  their  states ;  and  lovingly  to  combat  with 
them,  wonderfully  as  they  are  by  the  Lord  permitted 
to  exist. 


CI. 


PRAYER   AND    INFLUX. 

Coming  lower  down,  tlie  analogies  of  prayer  range 
through  living  nature,  and  mercy  in  many  ways  is 
besought  by  all  the  creatures.     The  dog  muzzled 
in   the  violation    trough,    and   his    cry   prevented, 
wags  his  tail  as  the  last  motion  by  which  he  asks 
for     mercy    where     there     is     no    mercy,     where 
the    ''  unalterable "    steel    heart    of    the    scientists 
is  supreme.     He  asks  for  a  Mercy  that  will  surely 
come.      And  prayer  is   peaceably  correlated   with 
the  solicitation  of  the  domestic  animals  to  man  for 
sustenance   and   protection;    the   intensity   of    this 
fact   is   the   measure    of  domestication.     It  is  the 
relation  of  natural  history  to  God,  whose  Psalmist 
says,  "  The  eyes  of  all  wait  upon  Thee."    The  prayers 
of  the  eyes  of  the  creatures  !     It  is  correlated  uni- 
versally in  human  nature,  where  all  that  is  lower  is 
in  one  continual  conscious  or  unconscious  solicitation 
to  those  Avho  are  higher.     And  public  and  private 
conscience  exist  as  they  with  instant  wisdom  own 
the  claim,  and  grant  and  work  out  the  prayer.     So 
that  man  with  his  dependencies,  even  apart  from 
God,  subsists  by  prayer.     And  whoso  is  out  of  it, 
and  keeps  out,  is  in  the  stone-hearted  abyss  already. 
In  ccmclusion,  it  has  now  been  seen,  that  God, 
having  created  the  universe,  has  His  hand  upon  it 
from  its  origin,  and  continually.     That  a  god  who 
does  not  hear  prayer  and  intervene  visibly  or  in- 
visibly in  human  affairs,  in  which  freewill  of  his 


39° 


PRAYER  AND  INFLUX. 


'* 


^ 


own  imparting,  prescribes  his  own  divine  limits,  is 
unknown  to  revelation,  to  personal  experience  where 
there  is  experiment,  to  history  and  to  natural  history. 
That  the  existence  of  an  atheist  god  is  supported  by 
nothing  in  nature  or  man;  and  at  this  day  is  the 
culminating  juggle  of  hell  practised  upon  the  willing 
credulity  of  scientists. 

This  not  meant  coarsely,  although  the  terms  are 
final.  They  are  necessarily  so,  because  since  the 
last  judgment,  heaven  and  hell  have  been  opened  as 
factors  in  human  thought  first;  and  afterwards,  in 
affairs;  and  there  is  no  closing  the  gates  of  influx  any 
longer.  Not  mere  good  and  evil  of  circumstance 
will  be  pleaded  in  the  future  wars  of  faith  and  prac- 
tice, but  open  heaven  and  open  hell.  The  laws  of 
both  can  be  appealed  to,  because  the  laws  of  both 
have  been  made  manifest.  Self,  once  regarded  as 
merely  natural,  is  now  known  and  declared  to  be 
diabolical.  This,  in  its  whole  compass,  is  a  new 
knowledge  and  a  new  point  of  departure  for  man- 
kind. It  will  sharpen  every  sword  on  both  sides, 
and  heart  will  meet  heart  in  affirmation  and  denial ; 
in  inward  religious  war  as  well  as  in  outward.  It 
will  penetrate  into  Parliament,  and  whether  tacitly 
or  openly,  be  the  inmost  platform  of  action,  and  the 
new  demand  of  duty;  the  new  target  of  the  parlia- 
mentary scoffer  and  atheist.  It  will  bring  the 
Bible  into  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  rights  of  rich 
and  poor,  and  it  will  constitute  the  right  of  prayer 
into  one  of  the  rights  of  Parliament,  without  which 
its  needed  light  cannot  be  obtained,  or  its  true  busi- 
ness be  carried  on.  Not  abrogating  the  old  Prayer 
Book,  it  will  open  the  praying  senator.  *  It  will 
stretch  a  new  shield  over  weakness,  and  a  terrible 
humanity  over  the  dumb  animals  of  the  country. 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH.       391 

It  will  speak  equal  rights  for  men  and  women,  not 
before  the  law  first,  but  before  the  Lord.     It  will 
shelter  madness  from  the  lust  of  power  and  profit. 
It  will  steadily  disestablish  other  things  that  right- 
eousness   may    be   established;     and    abolish    the 
privileges  of  men  that  the  gifts  of  heaven  may  come 
down  unobstructed.      And  all  this  simply  because 
the  New  Jerusalem  has  been  revealed;  not  only  a 
new  ideal,  but  a  new  real,  extant  in  heaven,  and  foot 
to  foot  against  hell;  knowledge  and  combat  both. 
This  public  and  private  change  is  in  its  small  begin- 
nings now;  and  comes  out  of  the  immeasurable  fact, 
that  men  are  no  longer  closed  in  themselves,  but  are 
open  doors  of  prayer  and  influx  through  which  stream 
the  light  and  power  of  the  second  coming  of  the 
Lord  in  a  new  religious  dispensation. 


CIL 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH. 

The  new  freedom   of  mankind,   originating   pri- 
marily in  the  last  judgment  and  the  new  dispensa- 
tion, and  in  the  opening  of  the  two  great  abodes  of 
spiritual  forces,  namely,  the  heavens  and  the  hells, 
submits  the  questions  of  this  age  to  a  strain  which 
is  sensible  in  all  minds,  and  give  pauses  of  silence  in 
the  midst  of  human  intercourse,  implying  a  caution 
as  against  new  dangers  on  an  untrodden  way.     For 
where  there  is  a  new  freedom  of  action  with  fields 
of  power  ahead,  the  matter  is,  what  to  do  with  it. 
This  is  seen  very  especially  in  the  perception  looming 
everywhere,  of  the  rights  of  women.     Not  to  men- 
tion other  branches  of  the  subject,  political  rights, 


% 


390 


PRAYER  AND  INFLUX, 


own  imparting,  prescribes  his  own  divine  limits,  is 
unknown  to  revelation,  to  personal  experience  where 
there  is  experiment,  to  history  and  to  natural  history. 
That  the  existence  of  an  atheist  god  is  supported  by 
nothing  in  nature  or  man;  and  at  this  day  is  the 
culminating  juggle  of  hell  practised  upon  the  willing 
credulity  of  scientists. 

This  not  meant  coarsely,  although  the  terms  are 
final.     They  are  necessarily  so,  because  since  the 
last  judgment,  heaven  and  hell  have  been  opened  as 
factors  in  human  thought  first;  and  afterwards,  in 
affairs;  and  there  is  no  closing  the  gates  of  influx  any 
lono-er.     Not  mere  good  and  evil  of  circumstance 
will  be  pleaded  in  the  future  wars  of  faith  and  prac- 
tice, but  open  heaven  and  open  hell.     The  laws  of 
both  can  be  appealed  to,  because  the  laws  of  both 
have  been  made  manifest.     Self,  once  regarded  as 
merely  natural,  is  now  known  and  declared  to  be 
diabolical.     This,    in  its  whole    compass,  is  a  new 
knowledge  and  a  new  point  of  departure  for  man- 
kind.    It  will  sharpen  every  sword  on  both  sides, 
and  heart  will  meet  heart  in  affirmation  and  denial ; 
in  inward  religious  war  as  well  as  in  outward.     It 
will  penetrate  into  Parliament,  and  whether  tacitly 
or  openly,  be  the  inmost  platform  of  action,  and  the 
new  demand  of  duty;  the  new  target  of  the  parlia- 
mentary  scoffer   and   atheist.       It  will   bring    the 
Bible  into  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  rights  of  rich 
and  poor,  and  it  will  constitute  the  right  of  prayer 
into  one  of  the  rights  of  Parliament,  without  which 
its  needed  light  cannot  be  obtained,  or  its  true  busi- 
ness be  carried  on.     Not  abrogating  the  old  Prayer 
Book,   it   will  open   the  praying  senator.    •  It  will 
stretch  a  new  shield  over  weakness,  and  a  terrible 
humanity  over  the  dumb  animals  of  the  country. 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH.       391 

It  will  speak  equal  rights  for  men  and  women,  not 
before  the  law  first,  but  before  the  Lord.     It  will 
shelter  madness  from  the  lust  of  power  and  profit. 
It  will  steadily  disestablish  other  things  that  right- 
eousness   may    be   established;     and    abolish    the 
privileges  of  men  that  the  gifts  of  heaven  may  come 
down  unobstructed.      And  all  this  simply  because 
the  New  Jerusalem  has  been  revealed;  not  only  a 
new  ideal,  but  a  new  real,  extant  in  heaven,  and  foot 
to  foot  against  hell;  knowledge  and  combat  both. 
This  public  and  private  change  is  in  its  small  begin- 
nings now;  and  comes  out  of  the  immeasurable  fact, 
that  men  are  no  longer  closed  in  themselves,  but  are 
open  doors  of  prayer  and  influx  through  which  stream 
the  light  and  power  of  the  second  coming  of  the 
Lord  in  anew  religious  dispensation. 


CII. 


WOMAN    UNDER   THE    NEW   CHURCH. 

The  new  freedom  of  mankind,  originating  pri- 
marily in  the  last  judgment  and  the  new  dispensa- 
tion, and  in  the  opening  of  the  two  great  abodes  of 
spiritual  forces,  namely,  the  heavens  and  the  hells, 
submits  the  questions  of  this  age  to  a  strain  which 
is  sensible  in  all  minds,  and  give  pauses  of  silence  in 
the  midst  of  human  intercourse,  implying  a  caution 
as  against  new  dangers  on  an  untrodden  way.  For 
where  there  is  a  new  freedom  of  action  with  fields 
of  power  ahead,  the  matter  is,  what  to  do  with  it. 
This  is  seen  very  especially  in  the  perception  looming 
everywhere,  of  the  rights  of  women.  Not  to  men- 
tion other  branches  of  the  subject,  political  rights, 


392 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH, 


and  rights  of  education,  may  be  adduced  in  point. 
No  reason  has  yet  been  given,  why  woman,  as  an 
experimental  person,  should  be  denied  her  experi- 
ment; why  any  real  sphere  of  life  should  be  closed 
against  her;  and  her  public  freewill  be  abated,  or 
wholly,  or  chiefly,  managed  by  the  masculine  free- 
wall.  The  despotism  over  her  cannot  last;  lier 
incessant  cause  will  wear  it  out,  and  tire  it  to  death. 
When  she  has  been  enfranchised,  and  barrier  after 
barrier  has  been  removed,  when  no  statute  not  obvi- 
ously sexual,  contains  either  ''  he  "  or  ^^  she  "  distinc- 
tively, and  all  the  ways  of  life  are  open  to  her,  and 
property  is  no  longer  masculine  but  human,  what 
will  she  do  with  her  freedom?  There  is  no  possi- 
bility of  forecasting  that  future.  It  is  adduced  only 
to  shew  the  new  strain  upon  responsibility  and  con- 
science whichis  coming:  and  howmucliGod  and  prayer 
will  be  needed  to  enable  her  to  bear  the  strain,  and  to 
receive  the  light  which  is  required.  Clearly  many 
rights  will  drop  when  the  power  to  exercise  them  is 
given.  Clearly  a  new  education  for  feminine  wisdom 
will  accrue  from  her  earnest  desire  and  inquiry  to 
know  what  fields  she  may  occupy.  It  is  obvious 
that  freedom  and  experiment  alone  can  qualify  her 
for  knowing  her  disqualifications;  that  she  will  then 
learn  from  failures  and  successes,  as  men  have  done, 
where  she  is;  and  become  a  teacher  to  herself  In 
the  meantime,  even  now,  with  Parliament  against 
her,  she  is  inwardly  in  tlie  tension  of  this  new  free- 
dom, and  is  not  sure  whether  she  is  to  be  as  a  man, 
or  whether  there  is  a  whole  new  womanly  side  to 
affairs  and  the  state. 

In  her  thoughts  of  education  also,  the  same  strain 
is  felt.  Is  she  to  be  as  a  young  man  and  a  collegian 
here,  and  to  be  made  into  a  man-woman  by  exactly 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH        393 

that  education  which  it  is  supposed  has  produced  the 
present  masculine  race  with  its  dominant  powers? 
It  is  not  perhaps  any  person  s  business  to  answer 
that  question,  but  rather  it  must  be  referred  to  ex- 
periment, of  Avhich  her  new  mental  freedom  is  the 
condition.     The  world   must  await   the   trial,    and 
succour  the  stress   which  it   involves.      There  are 
however  one  or  two  points  connected  with  the  pre- 
sent pages  which  may  be  cursorily  dwelt  upon.     It 
is  evident  that  woman  has  the  same  mental  powers 
as  men,  but  differently  sexed  and  centred.    She  can 
enter  in  her  way  into  all  arts  and  sciences;  she  can 
sit  on  thrones,   command   and   lead   armies,    exert 
eloquent  speech,  make  excellent  literature,  practise 
medicine  and  perform  surgery,  preach  in  pulpits,  and 
receive  divine  communications.    In  short,  the  scale  of 
her  powers  is  co-equal  with  all  things.     She  can  do  in 
every  department  what  she  has  an  adequate  affection 
for  doing.     But  what  perhaps  she  cannot  profitably 
do  in  the  long  run  is,  to  lay  hold  of  things  on  the 
purely  intellectual  side,  and  enter  them  thus.     Her 
heart  predominates,  as  the  head  predominates  in  the 
man.     Now  this  being  the  case,  to  give  her  equal 
chances  with  man,  a  complete  rehabilitation  of  know- 
ledge in  her  interest  also,  is  necessary;  that  she  may 
learn  a  corresponding  heart-truth   in  every  detail 
for  the  man  s  head-truth.     Man  has  the  advantage 
of  all  his  own  intellectual  experience  gained  through 
his  own  effort  by  his  own  sexual  process  of  thought; 
woman  has  no  present  advantage  of  the  kind  before 
her;  and  must  be  content  to  enter  upon  the  faculties 
of  man,  and  their  acquisitions,  at  second  hand.     This 
is  a  grave  consideration  for  the  advocates  of  the  high 
education  of  women;  indeed  for  their  general  edu- 
cation at  all;  that  the  intellect  of  the  heart,  that 


394 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH, 


beautiful  intellect,  should  have  no  knowledge  ot 
nature  and  things,  and  no  learning,  at  first  hand, 
but  only  what  supplants  its  freedom,  and  is  com- 
pelled upon  it  by  the  intellect  of  the  head.  It 
argues  the  throwing  away  of  a  marriageable  quality, 
the  abeyance  of  the  woman's  intellect  before  the 
mans. 

Is  she  to  rewrite  history,  to  reconstruct  f:cience,  to 
reproduce  metaphysics,  to  reinvent   the  arts,  from 
her  own  womanly  intellect,  so  as  to  have  a  world  of 
her  own,  and  introduce  it  into  harmonious  and  con- 
jugial   relationship,  as  of  the  heart-mind  with  the 
head-mind,  with  the  existing  intellectual  fabric  and 
art  fabric  which  is  so  preponderantly  of  masculine 
growth?     That   can   hardly  be  intended;    because 
what  has  been  done  hitherto  belongs  to  the  past,  and 
no  copy  of  it  is  possible;  nay,  no  new  original  which 
follows  the  old  lines.     Moreover,  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  man  has  done,  and  is  doing,  the  coarse  work 
of  thought,    invention  and  practice;    and  that  his 
partner   in  the   days   of  time  is  to  be  saved  that 
labour.      Nevertheless,    it   may    be   thought   that 
woman's  mind  has  a  sphere  of  its  own  in  every- 
thing; and  that  all  things  through  her  faculties,  now 
that  they  are  being  filled  with  the  new  freewill  which 
is  creative,  will  reappear  in  their  true  heart-forms. 
They  will  be  grouped  and  gathered  more  closely 
round  Use,  and  loop  up  speculation  where  its  sweep 
would  destroy  household  goods.     The  universe  seen 
by  her  will  be  smaller  and  more  domestic.     But  it 
will  more  easily  be  the  Lord's  universe  where  man 
hitherto  has  seen  only  God's  universe.     The  final 
truth  of  things   lies   that  way;  and   therefore  the 
scientific  eyes  of  woman  will  be  less  artificial,  and 
will  see  into  the  heart  of  things  by  that  sympathy 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH       395 

which  is  the  mother  of  thought.  Now  the  thought 
that  conies  out  of  a  true  sympathy  is  full  of  the 
finest  natural  truths.  It  cannot  therefore  be  sup- 
posed that  the  New  Woman  will  not  be  a  minister  and 
interpreter  of  nature,  and  have  in  the  long  run  her 
own  arts  and  sciences  accruing ;  but  rather  that  while 
man  gives  the  inductions  of  experience  gathered 
from  human  society  and  the  planets,  she  will  give 
the  deductions,  and  crystallize  them  in  that  house 
not  made  with  hands,  the  home.  Out  of  this  the 
society  arises,  and  the  state.  The  new  woman  will 
therefore  be  present  by  heart-truths  all  through  the 
commonwealth,  and  will  be  prime  minister  of  the 
new  man  in  his  permitted  administration  of  the  God- 
wealth.  The  coin  of  regeneration  will  pass  through 
her  fingers  in  its  payments  and  to  its  ends. 

There  is  one  thing  also  that  is  noteworthy  about 
woman;  in  an  age  of  free  speculation  like  the  present, 
her  mind  is  the  last  resort  of  the  old  religious  senti- 
ment, though  not  perhaps  the  first  recipient  of  the  new. 
She  holds  religious  society  together.     Therefore,  in 
her  new  perceptions,  as  well  as  in  the  domestic  root 
of  them,    she   compresses   useless    immensities    of 
thought  within  bounds,  and  limits  masculine  science 
as  well  as  she  can  in  its  insane  aspiration  to  be  a 
violator,  an  atheist,  and  a  god.     There  is  something 
of  business  in  the  broom  which  she  thus  wields,  to 
keep  the  dust,  and  dirt,  and  rubbish  of  the  masculine 
speculator  from  settling  on  her  floor.     As  she  sees 
this  more  clearly,  and  presses  the  matter  of  her  com- 
pulsory cleanhness  more  particularly,  science  will 
have  to  thank  God  and  her  for  making  it  once  more 
into  the  seer  of  the  mundus,  the  neatness  of  the  pro- 
priety of  things.     She  will  handle  her  instruments 
for  the  corners  of  the  mind's  ceiling,  and  bring  the 


396       WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH, 


spider  and  cobweb  of  materialism  out  of  one,  of 
naturalism  out  of  another,  of  deism  out  of  another, 
and  of  atheism  out  of  a  fourth;  and  put  these  im- 
TnunditicB,  these  parasites  and  monkeys  of  the  mundus, 
into  the  kitchen-fire,  and  say  to  her  maids,  that  is  to 
say,  to  her  sciences, — The  home  spoilers  shall  have  no 
place  where  I  am,  they  are  creatures  of  dirt,  good 
for  neither  man  nor  beast :  see  to  them  diligently  for 
the  future  that  none  of  their  eofj^s  be  left  here. 

Though  these  be  her  functions  analogously  put, 
and  they  sound  like  those  of  a  housewife,  and  are 
in  the  highest  degree  those  of  a  housewife,  and  of  a 
mother  of  children  who  must  be  cleanly,  and  of  the 
helpmeet  of  man  who  wants  a  sane  home,  yet  they 
are  intuitions  and  pressures  upon  the  body  of  the 
science  of  the  world.  In  compelling  its  decency, 
they  will  redintegrate  its  truth.  The  female  veto  on 
the  evils  and  falses  of  science,  and  on  the  passage  of 
these  into  acceptance  and  legislation,  is  the  most  im- 
portant scientific  function  and  responsibility  which 
are  demanded  of  her  in  these  years.  But  from  this 
private  basis,  other  offices  and  commissions  will 
arise;  and  perceptions  in  series  as  the  New  Church 
descends. 

It  is  said  in  the  Apocalypse,  a  book  to  which  we 
have  already  invited  the  attention  of  scientists,  '^  I 
saw  a  woman  clothed  with  the  sun,  and  the  moon 
under  her  feet,  and  on  her  head  a  crown  of  twelve 
stars."  ^'The  woman  signifies  the  Lord's  new 
church  in  the  heavens,  which  is  the  new  heaven, 
and  the  Lord's  new  church  about  to  be  upon  earth, 
which  is  the  New  Jerusalem.  .  .  .  The  woman  ap- 
peared clothed  with  the  sun,  because  that  church  is 
in  love  to  the  Lord ;  for  she  acknowledges  Him,  and 
does  His  commandments,  and  this  is  to  love  Him. 
The  sun  signifies  love.     The  moon  was  seen  under 


WOMAN  UNDER  THE  NEW  CHURCH.        397 

her  feet,  because  the  church  on  earth,  not  yet  con- 
joined with  the  church  in  heaven,  is  understood;  for 
the  moon  signifies  intelligence  in  the  natural  man, 
and  faith;  and  its  appearing  under  the  feet  signifies 
that  the  church  is  about  to  be  upon  earth.  Other- 
wise, the  feet  signify  the  church  itself  when  it  is 
conjoined  with  heaven.  It  is  to  be  observed  that 
there  is  a  church  in  heaven  as  well  as  upon  earth, 
for  the  Word  exists  in  heaven:  there  are  temples 
also,  and  preachings  in  them  there,  and  ministerial 
and  priestly  offices;  for  all  the  angels  there  were 
once  men,  and  their  departure  from  the  world  was 
only  a  continuation  of  their  life.  .  .  .  ^  Upon  her  head 
a  crown  of  twelve  stars'  signifies  the  wisdom  and 
intelliofence  of  the  New  Church  from  knowledges  of 
divine  good  and  divine  truth  from  the  Word.  A 
crown  on  the  head  signifies  wisdom  and  intelligence : 
stars  signify  the  knowledges  of  divine  good  and 
divine  truth  from  the  Word;  and  twelve  signifies  all 
things  of  the  church  which  have  relation  to  its  good 
and  truth."     {Apocalypse  Revealed,  533,  534.) 

This  revelation  of  the  coming  church  of  course 
does  not  signify  woman  apart,  yet  plainly  it  does 
signify  a  feminine  or  receptive  relation  of  the  new 
human  nature  to  the  Lord,  and  reaches  down  by 
correlation  to  the  whole  position  of  woman  with 
regard  to  those  three  leading  planes,  love,  wisdom, 
and  knowledge.  It  dispenses  for  woman  also,  all 
the  knowledges  of  good  and  truth.  It  referred  only 
to  one  state.  It  preceded  the  birth  of  the  man- 
child,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  New  Church,  the  true 
doctrine  of  the  Lord  and  His  incarnation :  the  man- 
child  who  is  to  rule  all  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron; 
to  reign  over  evils  by  the  power  of  divine  natural 
truth,  which  is  signified  by  a  rod  of  iron,  *^  and  at 


398 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION, 


the  same  time  by  rational  considerations  from 
natural  light."  It  preceded  the  coming  of  the  great 
red  draofon  face  to  face  with  the  woman  in  her  child- 
bearing;  that  is  to  say,  the  doctrine  of  justification 
by  faith  without  the  life  of  love;  a  great  red  dragon 
being  the  organic  appearance  of  that  doctrine  in  its 
grouped  multitudes  of  followers  in  the  spiritual 
world.  This  passage  therefore,  for  our  present  very 
small  view,  may  be  accepted  as  a  declaration  that 
the  new  man  and  the  new  woman  are  in  a  church  in 
which  all  the  knowledges  of  what  is  good  and  true, 
and  in  the  ultimate  fact,  all  the  sciences,  will  crown 
the  conjoint  mind  of  the  race,  and  be  its  prerogative 
in  the  church  and  its  royalty  in  the  world. 

cm. 


THE    NEW    EDUCATION. 

The  chief  means  to  this  in  the  intellectual  and 
rational  faculties,  (which  however  are  strictly  subor- 
dinate to  regeneration  in  daily  life,  and  fluctuate  with 
it  continually,)  is  the  restored  Science  of  Correspon- 
dences. This  in  its  essence  is  gentle,  humane,  and 
perceptive;  descending  through  the  afiections,  con- 
stituting a  field  of  new  intuitions,  and  inheriting  all 
former  domains  of  science,  but  especially  ranging 
over  the  free  fields  of  the  natural  creation  as  its  daily 
w^alks.  It  is  a  science  of  peaceful  delights  and 
attractions,  organic  with  innumerable  principles,  each 
the  perception  of  a  creative  purpose,  or  of  aliving  soul; 
so  it  knows  what  the  creatures  are  by  knowing  their 
good,  and  seeing  it  carried  out  in  their  forms;  this 
carrying  forth  being  organization.  It  brings  down 
the   spiritual   and   the   social  also,  and  sees  them 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION, 


399 


imaged  and  working  in  these  subordinate  forms,  and 
consequently  is  a  real  presence  of  the  knowing  mind 
pervading  nature;  human  character  being  printed 
off*  in  creation,  whose  forms  are  its  intelligible  words. 
It  also  brings  the  divine  Lord  into  knowledge,  first 
in  the  correspondences  of  the  extensive  "Word,  and 
second,  in  the  answers  to  these  correspondences 
throughout  nature.  It  therefore  consists  of  thought 
within  thought,  and  of  perception  within  perception : 
nay,  of  affection  and  delight  within  and  within.  More- 
over, it  leaves  all  other  honest  sciences  standino-,  and 
is  a  new  incentive  to  the  exact  prosecution  of  them  all. 
On  the  side  of  Use,  what  may  not  be  expected 
from  it  in  its  very  gradual  development  under 
regeneration?  At  present  the  forms  of  the  creation 
are  for  the  most  part  used  in  only  a  general  way,  but 
the  science  of  correspondences  is  the  science  of  par- 
ticulars and  specifics.     George  Herbert  says, 

^'  Herbs  gladly  cure  our  flesh,  because  that  they 
Find  their  acquaintance  there." 

The  flesh  however  does  not  usually  know  how  to 
cull  them.  Correspondences  supply  the  eye  and  the 
hand  and  the  application.  A  walk  in  the  fields  with 
that  eye  opened  would  suggest  more  cure  of  disease 
than  all  our  pharmacopoeias,  and  open  mines  of  pre- 
cious substance  for  the  purification  of  the  blood  and 
the  body.  It  would  speedily  make  the  good  side  of 
nature  into  the  tree  of  medical  life.  This  will  be 
eflfected  by  the  revealed  correspondence  of  the  evils 
of  hereditary  and  acquired  character  with  the  diseases 
of  the  frame,  and  of  the  diseases  Avith  their  corre- 
sponding plants,  aggravative  and  curative.  Something 
considerable  of  the  kind  has  already  been  done  by 
Hahnemann  in  Homoeopathy;  but  in  the  way  of 
detailed  experiment  with  poisons,  not  through  the 


400 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION. 


\v 


intuitive  collocation  of  correspondent  planes  of  forms; 
his  method  being  synthetic  from  below,  while  that 
of  correspondences  is  true  to  the  human  mind's  ulti- 
mate place  of  power,  and  is  synthetic  from  above. 

Then,  for  another  thing,  correspondences  are  a 
compound  memoria  technica  or  art  of  remembrance 
in  nature;  and  we  know  what  a  feeder  for  the  intui- 
tions of  truth  a  great  and  constant  memory  is.  And 
again  they  enable  the  mind  to  travel  rapidly  through 
related  kingdoms  of  forms,  seeing  principles  under  a 
diversity  of  appearances  which  would  baffle  the  un- 
opened mind  of  the  naturalist.  And  moreover,  they 
arc  a  perpetual  teaching  in  the  daily  walk,  for  any 
one  of  them,  truly  perceived,  will  write  its  own 
school-book,  and  pass  with  a  power  of  amusement, 
and  a  sense  of  imparted  faculty,  into  the  minds  of 
even  young  children ;  and  be  as  tenacious  and  easy 
as  on  the  obverse  side,  nicknames  are.  A  friend  of 
the  writer  s,  the  late  A.  J.  Scott,  that  earnest  and 
genial  educationist,  who  probably  felt  no  special 
interest  in  the  science  of  correspondences  as  given 
through  Swedenborg,  remarked  that  he  should  like 
to  see  the  subject  in  its  bearings  on  education,  in 
which  he  was  inclined  to  think  it  might  occupy  an 
important  place.  Doubtless  this  was  a  wise  forecast; 
for  the  definite  relation  of  things  from  their  source 
downwards  and  from  the  mind  outwards,  is  the  very 
justice  and  harmony  of  knowledge,  which  ^'  absorbs 
and  incarnates "  all  details,  presents  them  in  actual 
forms,  and  hands  them  over  as  held  words  into  the 
primers  of  a  new  education.  With  regard  to  mental 
philosophy  also,  though  that  is  not  our  subject  here, 
the  perception  of  correspondences  is  constitutive, 
both  by  abolishing  abstractions  from  the  mind,  by 
giving  the  Word  of  the  Lord  anew  to  its  field,  and 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION 


401 


by  supplying  an  endless  command  of  the  materials, 
the  true  stones,  out  of  which  the  mind  itself  is  built. 
All  this  constitutes  a  science  which  men  and 
women  may  enter  equally;  and  here  therefore  we 
have  the  field  to  which  both  sexes  can  resort,  and 
where  each  can  perceive  and  utter  its  appointed 
truths.  The  old  sciences  are  the  albumen  of  the 
Qgg\  but  this  is  the  yolk,  with  at  present  the 
pu7ictum  saliens,  and  then  the  pmictum  vivens,  and 
last  to  come,  the  Hving  chick.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  intellectual  sciences  of  the  past  belono* 
productively  to  woman ;  it  cannot  be  doubted  that 
the  perceived  science  of  the  descent  of  the  divine 
mind,  and  then  of  collective  and  single  human 
characters,  thougli  all  forms,  and  their  representa- 
tion in  all,  will  be  but  half  a  science,  and  a  dwindling 
half,  if  the  feminine  voice  be  not  heard  speaking 
in  all  its  sweetness  through  the  instructed  musical 
air.  This  science  is  not  artificial,  but  created;  it 
is  all  nature  and  faculty  together  :  how  could  the 
half  of  nature,  and  the  half  of  faculties,  elicit  it,  know 
it,^  hve  in  it,  and  love  in  it?  It  is  a  reproductive 
science,  and  so,  not  male  alone.  In  this  science  lies 
the  marriage  of  the  masculine  with  the  feminine 
love  of  truth.  The  Word  is  its  instructor  in  the 
way,  and  the  uses  of  a  new  life  are  its  children. 
The  new  woman  on  her  head  will  have  its  crown  of 
twelve  stars. 

One  strange  realm  of  forms  is  brought  within  the 

scope  of  the  opened  rational  mind  by  the  reception  of 

the  knowledge  and  life  of  correspondences :  namely, 

the  compound  animal  forms  seen  in  the  prophetic 

and  apocalyptic  visions.      The  reader  will  bear  in 

mmd   that   the   spiritual   world    is   a   plastic   and 

representative  world,  whose  spaces  are  really  states 

2  c  ' 


402  THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TIOJST. 

and  whose  times  are  the  variations  of  those  states. 
It  results  that  whatever  there  is  in  a  man  or  a 
woman,  in  a  society,  in  a  kingdom,  or  in  a  church, 
is  bodied  forth  in  real  forms  without  them ;  as  we 
saw  just  now  that  the  gathered  church  organization 
of  salvation  by  faith  alone,  without  charity  which  is 
the  active  day's  work  of  love,  presented  itself  in 
vision  as  a  great  red  dragon :  great  from  the  vast 
acceptance  of  the  doctrine;  red,  from  perversion 
and  destruction  of  love,  which  itself  is  red  in  the 
opposite  or  good  sense;  and  a  dragon  from  the  form 
and  power  of  its  warfare  against  heaven  in  man. 

Swedenborg  gives  his  own  inductive  experimental 
proof  of  this  signification  of  the  dragon,  which  can- 
not be  gainsaid  without  a  contrary  experience.  His 
words  are  :  ''  That  the  dragon  here  means  those 
who  are  in  faith  alone  and  reject  the  works  of  the 
law  as  not  conducive  to  salvation,  has  sometimes 
been  testified  to  me  in  the  w^orld  of  spirits  by 
actual  experience.  I  have  seen  several  thousands 
of  such  assembled  together,  when  they  appeared  at 
a  distance  like  a  dragon  with  a  long  tail,  that  seemed 
full  of  prickles  like  thorns,  which  signified  falsities. 
Once  also  there  appeared  a  dragon  still  larger,  who, 
raising  his  back,  and  lifting  up  his  tail  towards 
heaven,  endeavoured  to  draw  down  the  stars.  Thus 
it  has  been  manifested  before  my  eyes  that  no 
others  are    meant   by  the    dragon."      {Apocahjim 

Revealedy  n.  537.) 

This  is  but  one  instance  of  such  creative  embodi- 
ment, of  which  there  are  many  other  examples  in 
the  lioly  Scripture.  The  cherubs  were  an  instance 
of  a  divine  composition  of  animal  forms;  they 
signify  protection  of  spheres  which  are  thus 
guarded  from   invasion;    whence   after  Adam  and 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION, 


403 


Eve,  the  celestial   Church,  fell   from   its   place,    a 
cherubic  sword  waving  every  way  barred    against 
human  re-entrance  the  gate  of  the  forfeited  Eden. 
The   manifold   beasts   seen    in   Ezekiel   are    other 
instances.     If  they  were   all  grouped,   it  would  be 
found  that  they  constitute  a  realm  of  forms.     The 
mythologies,    paintings  and  sculptures   of  Assyria 
and  Egypt,  derived  from  the  perverted  remainder  of 
the    correspondences    of   the    second    or    spiritual 
church,  have  brought  these  or  analogous  forms  into 
history;  and  human-headed  bulls  and  the  like  are 
the  result ;  and  in  the  last  resort  in  Greece,  where 
the  spiritual  life  was  reflected  in  art,  the  centaur  is 
one  of  the  forms  that  struggled  down  from  the  old 
religion   thither.      Ancient   and  modern  fable  and 
caricature  are  the  last  reflexion  of  this  realm  which 
was  peopled  with  such  portentous  images  in  the  past. 
It  cannot  die,  because  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of  the 
mind  itself  touched  by  the  spiritual  world.     There 
is  indeed  nothing  which  naturalism  and  scientific 
materialism  would  more  promptly  scout  than  the 
proposition  that  such  forms  have  any  verisimilitude 
in  real  things.     Even  the  great  sea-serpent  keeps 
these   chalky  gouts    of   the   mind    continually    on 
guard  and  in  alarm  lest  something  should  be  sub- 
stantiated  which    is   not   to    hand    at    will,     and 
which  is  too  wily,  and  too  big  a  circumstance,  for  a 
museum.     Swedenborof  has   thrown    rational  liofht 
upon  this   matter   of  compound    animals,    to   the 
extent  indeed  of  showing  the  mode  of  their  genera- 
tion in  the  spiritual  world,  the  very  necessity  of  it, 
and  then  the  mode  of  their  introduction  (through 
the   openness  of  minds  to  the  spiritual  world   by 
actual   intromission   thither   as  in  his   case,   or  by 
vision,  real  representative  sight,  as  in  the  case  of 


«t 


404  THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION. 

the  prophets   and  John  the  Evangelist,)  into  the 
religions,  mythologies,  architectures,  and  fables  of  the 
natural  world.     The  case  is  a  simple  one,  or  at  least 
a  compound  of  simples.     It  has  been  shown  before 
that  the  creative  correspondential  wave  or  undula- 
lation   passing    through    man,    striking    the    next 
lower   and   therefore   resistent  plane  without  him, 
rises   up   into   the    next   inferior   correlate    forms; 
so   that   the   intimacies   of    innocence    in    heaven, 
besides  their  own  provocation  of  human  states  of 
beatitude,  angelic  newness  of  infancy  in  themselves, 
engender  sheep  and  lambs  as  forms  on  the  celestial 
fields.      This   for    the    individual.      But    for    the 
society,  it  is  grouped  according  to  its  doctrines  and 
principles  of  love  and  truth.     These  also  are  repre- 
sented, but  in  a  compound  degree,  on  greater  planes 
of  resistance.     It  is  especially  the  Word,  and  the 
reception  of  it  by  the  angelic  men  and  women,  that 
is  thus  embodied ;  as  in  the  four  beasts  full  of  eyes 
before  and  behind,  ''  In  the  midst  of  the  throne,  and 
round  about  the  throne,   four  beasts,  full  of  eyes 
before  and  behind.     And  the  first  beast  was  like  a 
lion,  and  the  second  beast  like  a  calf,  and  the  third 
beast  had  a  face  as  a  man,  and  the  fourth  beast  was 
like  a  flying  eagle.     And  the  four  beasts  had  each 
of  them  six  wings  about  liim ;  and  they  ivere  full 
of  eyes  within "    (Rev.    iv.    6-8).      And  again  in 
another  place  there  is  this  description:   "And  the 
shapes  of  the   locusts  were  like   unto  horses  pre- 
pared unto  battle  ;  and  on  their  heads  were  as  it 
were  crowns  like  gold,  and  their  faces  were  as  the 
faces  of  men.     And  they  had  hair  as  the  hair  of 
women,  and  their  teeth  were  as  the  teeth  of  lions. 
And  they  had  breast-plates  as  it  were  breast-plates 
of  iron,  and  the  sound  of  their  wings  was  as  the 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION. 


405 


sound  of  chariots  of  many  horses  running  to  battle. 
And  they  had  tails  like  unto  scorpions,  and  there 
were  stings  in  their  tails  "  (ix.  7-10).     And  yet  one 
more  instance :  *^  And  I  stood  upon  the  sand  of  the 
sea,  and  saw  a  beast  rise  up  out  of  the  sea,  having 
seven  heads  and  ten  horns,  and  upon  his  horns  ten 
crowns,  and  upon  his  head  the  name  of  blasphemy. 
And    the   beast    which    I    saw    was    like   unto   a 
leopard,  and  his  feet  were  as  the  feet  of  a  bear,  and 
his  mouth   as  the  mouth  of  a  lion"   (xiii.    1,  2). 
For   the    detailed    interpretation    of  these    forms, 
the  reader  is  referred  to  Swedenborg  s  Apocalypse 
Revealed,     The  general  remark  here  made  is  that 
the    leading    doctrines    of   the   human   mind,   its 
philosophies,  its  theologies,  and  its  anti-theologies,  so 
far  as  they  guide  life  and  practice,  and  admit  man 
to  the  Lord,  or  voluntarily  shut  him  ofi*  from  the 
Lord,  are  substantial  organizations  within  society, 
manifold    in    their   parts,   many-headed     monsters 
sometimes  ;  and  that  if  they  could  be  imaged  on  the 
sky,  or  thrown  upon  any  photographic  disk  of  this 
world,  they  would  telegraph  and  photograph  them- 
selves out  into  just  such  forms  and  appearances  as 
the  Evangelist  here  describes  from  his  vision  in  the 
Apocalypse.     It  stands  to  reason  that  they  must; 
the  correlation  of  forces  will  have  it  so.     But  of 
mercy,  and  of  nature,  the  atmospheres  of  this  dumb 
lower  world  are  not  adequate  to  be  the  wombs  of 
the  representation.     But  in  the  living  atmospheres 
of  the   spiritual   world,    where    all   elements  tend 
momentaneously   and   successfully   to    the    human 
form  and  its  correspondences  and  planes,  the  states 
of  societies    flow   into    these  images   whenever    a 
divine  representation  of  them,  for  ends  of  use,  is 
permitted  to  those  to  whom  these  states  pertain. 


I 


406 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION, 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION. 


407 


These  things  are  therefore  ultimate  facts  of  self-in- 
struction. And  e  codo  descendit  yv^Oi  a-eavrop  is  by 
them  attested  in  and  from  the  Word. 

The  apparent  decency,  even  where  it  is  completed 
by  mitre  and  tiara,  of  any  public  department  of  life, 
does  not  forbid  that  were  its  external  canonicals, 
mental  and  social,  put  aside,  and  its  naked  loves, 
what  it  delights  to  plan  and  longs  to  do,  laid  bare, 
and  projected  out  upon  a  truth-telling  firmament  of 
spiritual  representation,  it  would  not  be  seen  in  that 
organific  light  as  a  great  red  dragon  making  war  upon 
the  truths  of  the  Lord.  In  point  of  fact,  this  is  the 
form  in  which  the  Protestant  Church,  still  great  and 
decorous  upon  earth,  was  shown  to  John  under  the 
spiritual  skies.  The  Woman  met  that  form,  and 
will  meet  it  again  and  again  in  her  agony,  until  the 
New  Church  is  founded  in  the  life  of  nations  and 

peoples. 

"  '  And  the  serpent  cast  out  of  his  mouth  water  as 
a  flood  after  the  woman,  that  he  might  cause  her  to 
be  carried  away  of  the  flood.'     This  signifies  reason- 
ings from  abounding  falsities  to  destroy  the  church. 
The  serpent   signifies  here,  as  before,   the  dragon 
which  deceives,  and  the  woman,  the  New  Church. 
Water  signifies  truths,  and  in  the  opposite  sense, 
falsities.    A  river  signifies  truths  in  abundance,  and 
in  the  opposite  sense,  abounding  falsities.     Out  of 
the  mouth  of  the  serpent  signifies  reasonings.  .  .  . 
The  reasonings  of  those  who  are  meant  by  the  dragon 
are  all  from  fallacies  and  appearances,  which,  if  con- 
firmed, appear  outwardly  like  truths,  but  within  they 
conceal  falsities  in  abundance.  .  .  .  '  And  the  earth 
helped  the  woman ;  and  the  earth  opened  her  mouth, 
and  swallowed  up  the  flood  which  the  dragon  cast 
out  of  his  mouth.'    This  signifies  that  the  reasonings 


from  abounding  falsities  which  the  dragonists  pro- 
duce, are  brought  to  nothing  by  the  spiritual  truths 
rationally  understood,  which  the  Michaels,  of  which 
the  New  Church  consists,  adduce.  The  earth  which 
helped  the  woman  signifies  the  church  as  to  doc- 
trine; and  as  the  reasonings  from  falsities  which  the 
drao^onists  produce  are  treated  of,  the  means  by 
which  the  earth,  that  is,  the  church,  helps  the  woman, 
are  truths  from  the  Word.  To  open  her  mouth  sig- 
nifies to  adduce  those  truths.  The  river  which  the 
dragon  cast  out  of  liis  mouth  signifies  reasonings  .... 
to  swallow  the  river  signifies  to  make  these  rea- 
sonings come  to  nothing."  {Apocalypse  lievealed, 
n.  563,  564.) 

It  may  here  be  remarked  that  the  destruction  of 
these  falsities,  which  mainly  concern  the  unimport- 
ance of  good  and  the  all-importance  of  truth,  takes 
place  representatively  by  the  yawning  of  the  ground, 
by  the  apparent  action  of  the  earth  herself.  This 
reaches  down  into  evil  and  false  science  also,  which 
is  in  the  end  of  the  tail  of  the  great  red  dragon, 
beinof  a  material  faith  without  life.  The  text  there- 
fore  portends  the  ultimate  rebellion  of  true  external 
physics  against  the  floods  of  atheism  and  material- 
ism; the  battle  of  matter  itself  against  the  lie  ;  and 
thus  the  emancipation  of  the  doctrines  and  vitals  of 
matter  from  its  demon,  materialism. 

If  theology  is  thus  represented  from  one  end  of 
the  sky  to  the  other  in  the  Word,  and  the  red 
dragon  hoisted  that  all  may  see  it,  physiology,  which 
embraces  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  body  of  man  as 
including  his  mind,  and  whose  state  is  an  ultimate 
reflex  of  that  of  theology,  cannot  be  left  out,  but  has 
its  own  share  in  the  image  and  the  picture;  say 
rather  in  the  life  and  movement  of  the  dragon.     No 


4o8 


THE  NE  W  ED  UCA  TION. 


human  mind  without  open  vision  can  declare  what 
the  specific  physiological  state  may  be  as  manifested 
in  a  form;  but  as  the  spiritual  world  is  the  power  of 
bodying  forth  collective  inward  conditions,  and  giving 
them  a  just  local  habitation  in  exact  frescoes,  we 
know  that  the  present  physiology  is  already  written 
down,  and  revealed  when  needful  on  the  pages  of 
the  book  of  the  immortal  life.  If  the  shape  be  on 
the  animal  plane,  it  must  be  composite ;  and  the 
several  factors  of  physiology  have  organic  signatures 
there.  The  lust  of  extorting  the  secrets  of  life  by 
invading  it  from  without ;  the  lust  of  destroying  the 
animal  world  to  batten  the  selfhood  of  science ;  the 
lust  of  crucifying  nature  as  Christ  was  crucified;  the 
atheism  which  wields  the  instruments  of  the  scien- 
tific inquisition;  the  foolishness  of  believing  in  an 
insight  into  the  human  body,  the  image  of  the  temple 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  by  the  violation  of  beasts  ;  the 
madness  of  attempting  to  build  the  heart  of  healing 
out  of  the  bricks  of  cruelty;  these  and  many  more 
elements  must  contribute  to  the  terrible  blazon  of 
physiology  coiling  on  the  spiritual  walls.  Whatever 
the  shape  may  be,  it  is  sufficient  to  know  that  the 
end  is  mental  destruction,  and  that  Mene,  Mene, 
Tekel,  Upharsin,  is  written  over  its  banqueters  in 
letters  of  judicial  rational  light  for  the  new  age. 

For  not  an  atrocity  has  entered  into  it  that  is  not 
garnered  and  ingrained  into  its  form.  As  with 
human  beings  which  carry  their  inherited  and 
acquired  evils  in  their  constitutions,  in  which  they 
are  manifested  in  mortal  forms  at  last ;  so  with 
societies,  theologies,  philosophies,  and  sciences.  They 
all  carry  and  accumulate  the  diseases  of  which  they 
die;  degenerations  first,  then,  from  stress  of  circum- 
stances, acute  maladies;  and  then  succumbing  of  life, 


NE  W  CENTRES  OF  SPIRITUAL  LIFE,       409 

and  decay.  Physiology  has  reached  that  point. 
Never  so  large  in  appearance  and  girth  as  now,  never 
so  tenacious  of  its  own  wealth,  or  so  greedy  of  acqui- 
sition, never  so  reputed  by  the  old  speculators  and 
gamesters  around  it,  never  so  much  looked  up  to  by 
the  brood  of  false  hopes  which  expect  its  inheritance, 
never  so  near  the  purple  of  empire,  it  is  yet  gasping 
and  senile,  and  sells  itself  to  the  arch-enemy  to 
secure  a  new  lease  of  existence.  The  cruel  old 
physiology,  from  which  human  nature  has  suffered 
much,  and  is  not  better  but  worse,  is  upon  its 
deathbed. 


CIV. 


NEW   CENTRES   OF    SPIRITUAL   LIFE. 


The  same  state  may  be  alleged  of  the  human  mind 
as  a  selfish  organon.  As  we  have  previously  seen, 
several  collective  human  minds  have  already  been  con- 
summated, and  have  died  out;  the  Lord,  from  above, 
and  from  without,  by  His  interposition,  raising  up 
among  men  a  new  mind,  capable  of  a  new  career,  and 
of  regeneration.  Both  these  events  are  now  taking 
place.  The  dying  out  does  not  necessarily  occur  by 
the  destruction  of  the  race,  and  at  first  it  is  not 
obvious,  though  it  is  usually  accompanied  by  great 
wars  and  revolutions  which  break  the  old  state  in 
pieces;  by  heaving  of  the  grounds  of  society  up- 
wards; or  by  glacial  epochs  of  indifference  and 
numbness,  to  prepare  a  tabula  rasa  and  a  new  plane ; 
and  probably  these  things  will  be  seen  in  the  present 
catastrophe.  But  it  rather  implies  the  displacing  of 
the  former  centre  from  its  post  of  dominion,  and  the 


410 


NE  W  CENTRES  OF  SPIRITUAL  LIFE, 


I 


constitution  of  new  necessities  and  principles  as  a 
centre  in  its  stead.  The  Protestant  and  Catholic 
churclies,  and  the  atheisms  which  are  their  scurf, 
the  Protestant  and  Catholic  atheisms,  are  the  centres 
which  are  now  displaced;  and  the  new  centre  in  its 
extent  is  a  plane  of  rational  freedom,  and  in  it  a  tiny- 
spot  of  light,  the  recognized  New  Church,  the  herald 
of  the  Sun  of  ri ofhteousness :  the  liHit  cominor 
necessarily  before  the  orb,  as  in  Genesis,  in  which 
the  dawn  day  precedes  the  sunrise  day. 

In  a  former  chapter  we  have  seen  what  the 
attestations  are  that  a  New  Church  is  descendinof 
upon  the  earth  from  the  new  heavens  constituted 
after  the  last  judgment  in  1757  of  the  prepared 
people  who  had  lived  since  the  beginning  of  the  first 
Christian  era.  This  New  Church  revealed  in  the 
waitings  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  from  its  founda- 
tion in  the  Word,  is  the  new  mind,  whose  pressure 
is  felt  in  different  degrees  in  all  human  bosoms, 
shaking  human  nature  exceedingly,  and  rousing  the 
old  churches  and  anti-churches  into  an  apparent  life 
of  combat  and  unrest.  They  do  not  know  what  has 
happened,  but  fury  and  fear  are  poured  out  upon 
them.  Under  the  pressure,  and  its  reflex  actions, 
they  are  all  forced  into  accord  upon  one  thing,  and 
that,  the  most  alien  to  them  all,  namely,  the  in- 
definite extension  of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  in 
order  that  each,  now  hopeless  of  enthralling  the  rest, 
may  have  a  stand-point  and  a  space  on  which  to 
play  its  own  game.  The  New  Jerusalem  demands 
the  same  thinof,  for  this  reason  amono^  the  rest.  But 
also  for  another  reason,  that  it  descends  from  the 
liberty  of  the  New  Heavens,  though  the  very 
balance  of  the  spiritual  world,  and  that  a  new  liberty 
of  thinking  and  willing  concerning  divine  things  is 


NEW  CENTRES  OF  SPIRITUAL  LIFE.         411 

its  inmost  postulate  in  human  nature.  Therefore  it 
prepares  by  all  legislation  for  the  advancing  liberty 
of  individuals,  and  for  the  repression  of  license;  it 
prepares  the  kingdoms  and  commonwealths  of  the 
world  for  their  national  securities  of  liberty;  and 
becyins  to  weave  and  organize  the  various  nations 
to«"ether,  so  that  at  last  there  shall  be  no  outside 
nations;  but  the  family  shall  be  included  in  one 
bond,  and  Goths  and  Vandals  and  Huns  in  the 
future  be  unfeared  and  unknown.  The  new  mind, 
the  new  libertj^,  of  this,  is  in  all  the  parliaments  and 
politics  of  the  earth.  It  is  the  area  of  a  vast  con- 
sideration of  divine  things;  of  the  Word  of  the  Lord 
in  its  new  glory  coming  for  the  acceptance  of  the 
nations.  Nothing  less  than  such  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  liberty,  and  the  divine  right  of  the  freedom 
of  conscience,  can  enable  men,  or  nations,  to  bear  the 
stress  of  such  an  investigation  as  is  now  demanded 
of  their  minds;  nothing  less  than  a  co-equal  toler- 
ance founded  in  the  bed  of  all  states  can  in  the 
long  run  protect  the  recipients  of  the  new  truths 
from  their  adversaries,  to  whose  minds  those  truths 
are  intolerable,  as  light  is  intolerable  to  darkness. 

In  short,  the  new  freedom,  spiritual  first,  and 
afterwards  individual,  and  then  social  and  political, 
has  for  its  contents  a  new  revelation,  which  on  the 
floor  of  the  highest  rationality,  and  the  best  and 
broadest  common  sense,  stands  within  it,  and  where 
it  stands,  and  is  received,  creates  a  new  mind,  which 
is  the  present  centre  of  human  weal.  From  this 
centre,  for  the  most  part  unconsciously,  a  steady 
wave  of  private  and  public  humanity  presses  up 
against  unrighteousness;  a  new  fairness  and  honesty 
are  affirmed;  the  best  interests  of  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men  are  successfully  pleaded;  and  a  new 


412 


NE  W  CENTRES  OF  SPIRITUAL  LIFE. 


conscience    overcomes    old    interests    in    reluctant 
senates.     Flexibility  succeeds   flexibility,  and  new 
and  greater  views  of  truth  and  duty  and  work  are 
propounded  and  accepted.      By  these  occurrences 
also  the  new  theology  is  established  in  action,  and 
insinuated  into  thought,  long  before  its  source  is 
seen ;  and  a  way  prepared  for  the  acceptance  of  a 
true  knowledge  of  the  Lord  who  is  doing  it  all;  for 
learning  who  He  is.     By  the  same  way,  the  old 
theologies,  which  have  no  good  influence  on  life,  are 
being   quietly  judged    by   events   and   advents   of 
virtue,  which  it  is  seen  do  not  spring  from  them,  and 
do  not  belong  to  them,  and  thus  a  new  conscience  is 
preparing  in  the  practical  world,  by  which  they  will 
be   detached  and  cast  aside.     And  then  the  new 
theology  will  enter  openly  and   directly  upon   its 
schoolmastership.      That   old   theology,   Protestant 
and    Catholic,    atheistic,    deistic,    pantheistic,    has 
tolerated,  or  taken  quietly,  all  the  public  and  private 
evils  of  the  race  :  it  has  bade  us  look  to  a  future 
heaven,  or  to  fate,  for  our  remedy;  and  kept  the 
mind  from  its  life,  which  consists  in  doing  the  whole 
duty  of  man  for  the  day.     That  was  because  it  had 
no  practical  work-day  Lord  and  God.      The  new 
theology  reverses  these  things.     Its  tenet  is,  that  as 
is  the  man's  God,  so  is  the  man,  and  so  is  the  life, 
and  so  is  the  combined  action  and  society  and  future 
of  the  aggregate  men.     Its  God  is  the  Lord,  known 
from  the  Word  as  Jesus  Christ,  known  in  heaven  as 
the  Lord  only.     Its  tenet  also  is  that  for  conjunction 
with  Him,  evils,  whether  private  or  public,  are  to 
be  shunned  as  sins  against  Him;  whereby  He  is 
loved,  and  is  omnipresent  in  the  guidance  of  that 
mind;  and  that  good,  namely  use,  is  to  be  done  for 
the  sake  of  the  neighbour,  as  from  ourselves,  thus  in 


THE  GATES  OF  DEATH  OPENED, 


4T3 


all  the  might  of  freewill,  with  the  acknowledgment 
afterwards  that  He  is  the  Doer,  and  that  it  is  all 
done  from  Him,  who  holds  the  balances,  and  gives  the 
freewill  momentaneously.  The  pressure  of  this  tenet 
is  now  upon  every  mind,  to  accept  it  practically,  or 
to  deny  it.  Here  then  is  a  vested  interest  of 
righteousness  for  individuals,  parliaments,  and 
nations;  and  it  may  therefore  well  be  said  that  a 
new  mind  is  placed  in  the  centre  of  all  churches,  and 
of  all  commonwealths.  But  first  in  the  heads  and 
hearts  of  individual  men  and  women.  The  interest 
of  this  traverses  other  interests,  judges  them,  is  the 
supreme  builder,  landholder,  and  property-holder; 
confirms  or  abolishes  institutions;  admits  or  denies 
rights;  justifies  executions  or  punishments;  and 
is  love  and  wisdom  at  work  preparing  day  by  day  for 
a  newer  coming  of  the  Lord. 


CV. 


THE  GATES  OF  DEATH  OPENED. 

The  great  evils  of  the  time,  the  stupendous  private 
and  corporate  greed,  the  marshalling  of  nations  for 
aggression,  and  the  whole  facility  of  war,  the  abyssal 
declarations  of  the  Papacy,  the  conceit  of  divine 
privilege  of  Protestant  clergy,  the  pleaded  right  of 
science  to  do  what  it  likes  and  nationally  to  teach 
what  it  likes;  the  increasing  public  despotism  of 
medicine  over  the  state  and  the  people ;  the  huge  pro- 
cesses of  law  which  pour  floods  out  to  carry  away 
justice,  all  these  are  but  counter-attestations  of  the 
abuse  of  the  new  freewill  which  has  been  given. 


414 


THE  GATES  OF  DEATH  OPENED, 


They  are  the  criminals  of  long  ages,  with  new 
powers,  in  their  last  audacity  doing  the  things 
which  bring  down  their  judgment.  But  there  is  in 
them  all  a  new  goad  to  do  their  work  of  perversions 
in  a  short  time,  a  new  confusion,  and  a  new  rapidity 
of  decay.  They  rise  up  at  their  peril  to  confront  a 
new  liberty  and  a  new  charity  which  discriminates 
and  arraigns  them;  and  Parliament  which  used  to 
laugh  at  general  evil  as  necessary  evil,  turns  pale 
and  solemn  as  unwonted  causes  are  forced  upon  it 
with  no  escape  from  their  discussion.  The  reason 
is  that  the  Lord,  the  Judge,  though  unseen,  is  in 
the  near  backsrround:  and  the  weak  thinofs  of  the 
world  feel  Him,  and  are  inspired  by  a  vital  hope, 
and  assured  from  within,  that  the  day  has  come  when 
they  will  confound  the  strong.  Therefore  the 
appearance  and  organization  of  evil  on  a  new  scale 
of  magnitudes  is  to  be  expected  out  of  the  bosom  of 
the  new  freedom,  and  gives  confirmation,  but  no  dis- 
couraofoment,  to  the  man  of  the  church. 

The  subject  is  so  unexpected,  yet  so  pressing,  that 
it  may  be  permitted  to  recapitulate  its  heads.  First, 
there  is  a  divine  judgment  on  the  departed  men  and 
women  of  nearly  eighteen  centuries,  and  the  removal 
of  the  dense  cloud  of  the  influence  of  their  societies 
from  the  minds  of  the  men  and  women  on  eartli. 
Then  there  is  a  rehabilitation  and  reconstitution  of 
freewill.  The  Lord,  through  the  new  heavens  formed 
by  Him  into  societies,  and  through  the  opened 
Word,  is  no  longer  mediately,  but  directly  above 
this  freewill,  and  maintains  it;  while  by  His  divine 
humanity  He  communicates  with  the  rational  mind 
of  man,  opening  it  by  truths  as  light  opens  the  sight. 
These  centres  thus  constituted  involve  a  revolution 
in  the  spheres  beneath  them  on  this  planet;  a  new 


THE  GATES  OF  DEATH  OPENED, 


415 


polarity  tending  only  to  use,  and  the  good  of  the 
neighbour;  to  the  passing  away  of  old  things,  and 
to  all  things  becoming  new.  The  light  drives  the 
world  onwards;  those  who  see  it  only  as  light,  are 
compelled  more  or  less  to  act  upon  it;  those  who  see 
and  acknowledge  the  sun  from  which  it  radiates,  are 
helped  to  love  the  light,  and  under  it  to  define  their 
course,  and  to  do  the  day's  work  with  joy. 

These  things  cannot  be  seen  without  breaking  up 
the  old  notions  of  death.  If  men  and  women  could 
exhale  in  mortality,  such  views  would  be  dreams. 
But  death  is  the  garnering  of  the  whole  character 
into  a  substantial  spiritual  body,  and  the  commence- 
ment of  a  new  career  of  good,  or  evil,  works.  Death 
is  the  beginning  of  placing  the  last  generation  of 
minds  in  a  world  which  is  directly  above  this  world ; 
where  they  are  influential,  and  would,  as  in  the  past, 
be  all-powerful,  unless  that  upper  plane  or  stratum 
were  continually  cleared,  to  prevent  the  divine  influx 
new  for  every  age,  from  being  obstructed.  Now, 
humanly  speaking,  the  last  judgment  introduced 
this  eartli  to  a  capacity  of  commerce  with  the  new 
heavens.  We  may  illustrate  the  effect  by  the  inter- 
course of  nations;  for  instance,  by  the  effects  of  the 
commerce  of  the  West  with  China  and  Japan. 
From  immemorial  time  those  races  had  lain  secluded 
on  their  own  level  of  states;  and  perhaps  of  late, 
degradation,  and  some  sense  of  it,  had  been  heavy 
upon  them.  In  the  meantime,  new  means  of  com- 
munication had  sprung  up  under  the  feet  of  the 
West;  and  China  and  Japan  are  invaded  by  another 
race  with  steamboats  and  ideas:  invaded  by  an 
influx  of  what  they  at  first  call  "  outer  barbarians." 
Hitherto  they  have  hardly  believed  in  the  geogra- 
phical existence  of  the  countries  from   which  the 


4i6 


THE  GATES  OF  DEATH  OPENED. 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES.  417 


foreigners  come.     And  at  first,  no  great  change  ap- 
pears to  have  been  wrought  by  the  advent :  China  is 
China  still.  And  yet  it  requires  no  special  prophecy  of 
the  Western  men  to  enable  them  to  affirm  of  a  cer- 
tainty that  China  is  changed  from  top  to  toe  by  the 
first  European  staff  that  is  planted  on  her  ground; 
that  thenceforth  her  religions  are  merely  administered 
by  her  on  proper  sufferance  for  a  time;  that  her  moral 
dealings  are  dominated  by   truths   and   command- 
ments which  will  gradually  be  put  in  stricter  force; 
in  short,  that  the  new  pressure  to  which  she  is  sub- 
jected, though  uncomprehended  by  her,  will  steadily 
revolutionize  every  heart  and  home  in  her  dominions, 
and  with  merciful  delays  of  execution,  become  all- 
powerful.     Now  the  present  world  in  its  cherished 
selfhood,  its  denials,   and  its  ignorances,  is  a  vast 
China  with  relation  to  the  new  comers  from  the 
spiritual  world;  who  are  as  much  better  equipped 
for  a  higher  mission  of  peace  on  earth  and  goodwill 
to  men  than  the  present  inhabitants  and  ideas  of  the 
earth,  as  the  Europeans  are  more  gifted  for  civilizing 
missions  than  the  once  stagnant  Chinese.     But  to 
be  assured  of  this,  you  must  go  to  the  only  school  of 
spiritual   geography,   and   be  civil   to   "outer  bar- 
barians" who  are  angels  in  disguise;  you  must  know 
that  death  is  a  gate  to  another  life ;  that  that  life  is 
more  real  and  exact  than  this;  that  it  teems  with  all 
human  races,  not  a  man,  woman,  or  child  left  out; 
and  that  its  heavens,  in  which  the  Lord  is  the  king, 
are  opened,  have   struck  our  shores,  and  are  ever 
desirous  and  capable  of  communicating  by  immediate 
influx  with  the  earth,  and  of  realizing  themselves, 
and  being  realized  here,  through  man's  freewill,  in 
the  crown  of  prophecy,  which  is  the  New  Jerusalem 
state. 


OVI. 

THE    QUICKENING   OF   THE   AGES. 

There  is  an  organic  reason  for  the  rapidity  with 
which  events  succeed  each  other  now  compared  to 
the  rate  of  march  in  former  centuries.  From  the 
time  of  the  Lord  till  1757,  the  region  above  the 
earth,  namely  the  world  of  spirits,  into  which  those 
who  die  enter  first,  was  colonized  by  races  in  con- 
tinual decline,  and  as  explained  before,  the  societies 
they  formed  obstructed  the  light  of  heaven,  and  were 
stable  dominions,  principalities  and  powers  of  the 
selfhood,  until  they  were  arrested  and  stricken  by 
the  last  judgment.  They  were  organized  polities 
and  balances  of  the  power  of  unrighteousness.  After 
the  judgment  order  was  re-established,  in  other 
words,  those  populations  were  broken  up,  and  formed 
into  new  heavens  and  new  hells.  But  the  previous 
fact  had  been,  that  all  who  could  maintain  external 
appearances  of  good  were  allowed  in  their  places  in 
the  world  of  spirits, — in  their  imaginary  heavens, — 
for  many  centuries;  some  from  the  commencement 
of  the  Christian  era.  The  evils  which  they  em- 
bodied, the  stoppage  of  righteousness,  the  establish- 
ment of  unrighteousness,  the  discouragement  of 
justice  and  good  and  true  liberty,  the  extinction  of 
spiritual  light,  could  and  did  last  as  long  as  these 
populations  lasted;  and  their  pressure  was  upon  the 
subjacent  earth.  That  pressure,  and  human  censor- 
ship of  divine  things,  became  more  and  more  strin- 
gent.    These  upper  nations  dictated  terms  to  this 

world,  and  were  its  popes  and  imperial  "saviours  of 

2d 


4i8 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES. 


society."       But   when    they   were    displaced,   and 
human  equilibrium  restored,  the  lingering  of  persons 
in  the  world  of  spirits  was  limited  in  its  necessities 
to  their  own  private  states;  judgment  of  cases  so  to 
speak   became    rapid;     so   that    any   single   cause, 
namely  any  man's  life,  rarely  now  occupies  for  its 
complete  exhibition  more  than  thirty  years,  instead 
of,  as  previously,  in  some  cases  seventeen  centuries. 
This  means,  that  the  declaration  of  men  as  interiorly 
good  or  evil  takes   effect   rapidly  now,   and   their 
places  are  allotted  accordingly.     It  also  implies  that 
the  world  of  spirits  is  no  longer  a  senile  and  aged 
state  full  of  the  established  and  unwholesome  past, 
but  is  constantly  full  of  young  blood;    constantly 
cleared  of  passing  materials;  permeable  to  heaven 
and  hell  in  great  rivers  of  life ;  in  streaming  multi- 
tudes of  individuals.     It  means  that  its  bands  and 
states  and  churches  are  completely  traversed  by  the 
one  government  of  the  Lord.     Where  before  it  was 
a   thick   superposition    of  stratified   ages,  fifty-five 
generations  deep,  it  is  now  the  thinnest  of  layers, 
only  in  fact  of  the  depth  of  one  generation.     The 
people  move  through  it  like  blood-globules  in  the 
capillaries  in  single  files,  through  great  aflfectional 
societies   of  similars,    each    through    swift  trial   to 
judgment.     The  motives  that  come  from  it  are  all 
movable,  upwards  or  downwards;  there  is  no  settled 
empire  or  human  polity  in  them;  they  emanate  from 
no   thrones,    or   principalities,   or   historic   spiritual 
priesthoods,  but  from  the  single  dead  who  contin- 
ually stand  before  God  with  the  Book  of  Life  open 
before  them  day  by  day.     Spiritual  dominion  has 
lost  its  crown  in  the  spiritual  world,  and  the  indi- 
vidual will  is  naked  of  artificial  association.     And 
this  is  why  new  things  come  about  so  much  more 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES.  419 

easily.     Instead  of  being  in  a  chancery  1700  years 
lono-  in  its  pleas  and  plans  and  suits,  and  which 
thinks  to  keep  its  causes  for  ever,  that  tribunal  is 
abolished,  and  the  private  man  on  his  own  responsi- 
bility is  his  own  chancellor,  and  his  only  question  is, 
and  his  only  law.  Is  this  thing  good  and  true,  or  is 
it  not?    and,   Is  this  work  righteous,   or   wicked? 
The  Word  in  its  letter  opened  to  its  spirit,  is  the 
new  Law  Book;  the  Lord  in  His  Divine  Humanity, 
the  Judge  of  the  last  appeal;  and  His  face,  the 
approval.     This  is  a  mighty  simplification  of  process, 
and  shortening  of  judgments;  and  portends  a  corre- 
spondino-  quickness  for  the  better  life  and  the  worse 
life  here" on  earth.     It  is  the  Word,  ^^Behold  I  make 
all  things  new."     And  all  things  are  kept  new,  in 
other  w'^rds,  quick  and  moving,  by  that  Word  m 

continuity. 

This  drama  of  the  race  in  both  worlds,  notwith- 
standing its  dimension,  and  that  the  major  person  is 
invisible  to  tlie  eyes  of  this  earth,  is  yet  exemplified 
by  much  of  which  we  have  daily  experience.     For 
instance,   the   governmental   tyrannies  which  have 
existed,  and  do  exist,  the  usurpations  of  supreme 
power  in  a  nation,  press  upon  the  mind  and  will  of 
the  people,  and  the  common  good  is  slow  and  perish- 
ing as  long  as  the  tyranny  lasts.     The  conscience  of 
the  people  has  to  pass  through  the  tyranny  before  it 
can  get  at  the  good.     If  the  tyranny  is  overthrown, 
and  virtue  is  left  in  the  masses,  the  true  coinmon- 
wealtli  is  quickened,  and  every  man  regains  himself, 
sits  safe  under  his  vine  and  fig-tree,  and  has  a  career 
of  his   own.      Here  the   tyranny,   it   may  be   the 
inherited  tyranny,  of  one  generation,  is  parallel  in 
effect  with  the  tyranny  of  seventeen  centuries  extant 
over  the  heads  of  the  race.     To  take  another  ex- 


420 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES. 


ample,  as  between  two  neiglibouring  nations.  If  the 
one  from  past  wars  has  the  upper  hand  of  the  other, 
invades  it,  and  continually  threatens  to  invade  it, 
the  beaten  nation  lies  in  all  its  faculties  at  the  mercy 
of  a  foreign  power,  every  household  is  trammelled 
with  fear  and  watching,  and  the  progress  of  good  is 
hindered  perpetually  by  alarm  from  without;  the 
nation  and  the  individuals  do  not  possess  their 
own  soul.  Though  the  hostile  nation  be  invisible, 
yet  is  its  pressure  felt  in  every  cottage  in  the  land, 
and  lethargy  as  from  a  death  in  the  air  oppresses  the 
general  will.  The  good  men  and  women  in  the 
world  of  spirits  before  1757  were  such  a  nation,  and 
at  last  the  earth,  enslaved  by  the  pressure,  in  its 
most  private  freedom,  its  religious  freedom,  was 
subjected  and  denationalized. 

The  conqueror  came,  and  an  age  was  born.  Time 
was  re-born;  for  time  as  it  unrolls  from  the  Almighty, 
is  a  river  of  new  duties  for  every  day,  of  new  in- 
sights, of  new  delights,  and  at  the  end  of  the  day,  of 
new  loves.  The  old  time  was  not  this,  but  became 
more  and  more  stale  and  selfish.  Its  years  were 
aged  when  they  were  born,  and  sunk  into  the  livery 
and  imitation  of  the  tyrannous  past,  which,  however, 
could  it  have  been  seen,  was  no  other  than  an  over- 
bearing present  dominion  reaching  down  from  the 
spiritual  world.  Under  explanation  all  this  is 
obvious  enough,  and  is  adduced  again  only  to  point 
out  that  the  philosophy  of  general  history  tallies  with 
the  philosophy  of  Swedenborg,  and  that  general 
facts  in  the  life  of  neighbouring  nations  are  every- 
where parallel  with  what  he  declares  of  the  relations 
between  this  world  and  the  next. 

There  is  one  point  not  so  obvious.  How  did  the 
Lord,  when  He  trod  the  winepress  alone,  when  He 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES.  421 

beat  down  hell  by  daily  victories  over  its  tempta- 
tions, thereby  effect  so  great  a  victory,  that  heaven 
and  hell,  the  world   of  departed  spirits,  and   the 
future  of  this  earth,  were  thereby  reduced  to  a  new 
order,  and  are  kept  in  that  order?     With  us  men,  a 
great'leader  requires  for  any  parallel  achievement,  a 
great  army,  munitions  of  war,  and  a  prolonged  or 
perpetual  occupation  of  conquered  states.     He  led 
no  army  until  after  He  had  conquered,  but  His  own 
right  hand  and  His  holy  arm  got  Him  the  victory, 
and  then,  but  not  till  then,  the  angels  of  heaven,  and 
man's  restored  freedom,  became  His  army.     In  the 
combat,  however,  He  did  not  draw  upon  the  finite 
reserve,  the  ten  legions  of  angels.      The   solution 
centres  in  the  position  that  He  is  the  Lord.     Every 
evil  which    He   conquered  in   His   manhood,   was 
thereby  reduced   by  a  divine  omnipotence  to  the 
limits  of  the  freewill  of  the  person  doing  it,  and  the 
sphere  of  that  person  was  bounded  off  accordingly; 
and    by  these    boundaries,— this    ''so   far   and  no 
farther,"— the  Lord  became  by  personal  conflict  and 
triumph,  omnipresent  for  good  all  through  hell;  in 
fact.  He  redeemed  hell  from  the  power  of  growing 
worse.     But  do  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  this 
was  an  act  of  the  Godhead  and  not  of  the  human 
nature  alone ;   or  you  will  be  pursued  by  the  poor 
conception  that  a  man  like  ourselves  with  no  army 
and  no  occupation  has  mystically  overthrown  and 
keeps  subject  the  infernal  empires,  which  is  plainly 

an  impossible  event. 

One  would  fain  be  helped  to  say  more  upon  so 
new  and  transcendent  a  topic,  in  order  to  brnig  to  all 
minds  the  supreme  importance  of  the  true  doctrme 
of  the  Lord.  What  we  are  treating  of  is  notlnng 
less  than  the  union  of  the  offices  of  creation  and  re- 


422 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES. 


demption.     If  the  same  one  God  effected  both  these 
divine  acts,  then  they  flow  together,  and  permeate 
and  pervade  all  creatures.     In  redeeming  the  crea- 
tion, though  the  only  visible  phenomenon  is  a  divine 
private  life,  yet  every  line  of  substance  and  form  is 
necessarily  traversed  by  the   militant  Jehovah,  all 
providence  for  suns  and  systems  and  individuals,  for 
temporal  and  eternal  ends,  takes  a  new  front  in  His 
warring  humanity,  and   matter  and   spirit  are   re- 
united in  the  hands  of  the  great  Restorer.     It  is  the 
Creator  who  is  redeeming,  and  this  amounts  for  all 
purposes  to  new  creation,  nay,  not  only  to  new,  but 
to  redeemed  creation.     The  Lord  has  changed  to  His 
world  because  it  needed  that  He  should  do  so,  and 
His  chano^e  makes  it  afresh.     That  is  how  He  is 
unalterable,  that  He  is  always  ready  to  save.     The 
power  involved  is  that  of  a  Divine  Natural  Man. 
Add  this  stipulation  also  to  the  former  more  abstract 
conceptions  of  Creator  and  Kedeemer.     What  we 
have  then  to  admit  is,   1.  That  in  Jesus  Christ  the 
Creator  came  upon  the  scene :  this  carried  the  new 
eflect  through  the  creation.     2.  That  He  was  present 
as  a  man  among  men,  divinely  ''  living  down  "  their 
evils.     This  when  accomplished  against  all  evil,  gave 
Him  power  up  to  the  very  gates  of  freewill,  keeps  the 
individual  man   responsible   for   ever,   and   leaving 
voluntary  hell  untouched,  breaks  the  bands  of  cor- 
ruption asunder.     So,  as  the  laws  of  nature  are  the 
boundaries  of  this  world.  His  divine  human  laws  are 
the  boundaries  of  men  and  spirits;  the  kingdom  of 
artifice  has  passed  away  from  the  life  beyond  the 
grave,    and   in   all   its   perversions  continually  has 
judgment  here;  and  the  velocity  of  this  judgment 
increases  for  each  succeeding  generation. 

There  is  indeed  some  image  and  correlation  of  the 


THE  QUICKENING  OF  THE  AGES,  4^3 

Lord's  effectual  victories  over  all  the  hells,  and  of 
their  perpetual  subjection  to  his  conquests,  in  our 
experience  of  the  higher  events  of  what  is  called  the 
battle  of  life.     A  personal  evil  tendency  checked, 
and  continually  fought  against,  loses  its  power  of 
attack,  and  is  finally  disarmed  and  vanquished.     The 
delights  which  it  proffers  are  abhorred,  and  from  the 
contrary  delights  given  and  bred  in  the  regenerating 
man,  senses  which  reach  down  to  the  frontier  of  the 
will'of  the  evil,  are  produced,  and  instantly  repulse 
it  from  the  mind  into  the  body,  and  bind  and  subju- 
gate it  there.     So  too  in  the  society.     A  good  man 
obtains  a  first  triumph  in  some  urgent  cause  agamst 
a  public  wrong.     He  goes  to  prison  rather  than  pay 
an  iniquitous  fine,  and  his  conscience,  not  his  com- 
fortable home,  carries  the  day.     He  faces  the  wide 
oppressor  from  a  little  cell,  or  from  a  treadmill.     The 
martyrdom,  whatever  it  be,  whether  the  jail  or  the 
stake,  inflames  some  mens  hearts;  from  his  freewill 
opened  to  heaven,  theirs  is  opened  to  heaven ;  free- 
will  for   good   is   then  in  question,    and    He,   the 
redeeming  hero,  the  sustaining  Lord,  pours  through 
it.     The  evil  cause  is  then  in  full  revelation ;  God  is 
in  the   foreground  and   defends  the   right;  also  a 
human  leader  has  come,  the  undebauched  multitudes 
own  a  new  governor,  and  the  old  government  is  in 
its  doom.     That  man,  having  the  Lord  in  him,  not 
otherwise,  thenceforth  reaches  down  into  the  body 
and  powers  of  his  country;   subdues   their  selfish 
interests  even  though  they  are  embattled   in   the 
seven  heads  and  ten  horns  of  Parliament,  and  per- 
petuates right  against  dispute,  and  against  further 
aggression.    Thenceforth  the  wickedness  is  disbanded, 
the  collective  man  is  freed  from  it  unless  total  relapse 
is  proceeding,  and  it  is  left  to  individuals  to  practise 


424 


FREEDOM  AND  FREEWILL. 


FREEDOM  AND  FREEWILL, 


425 


the  foul  thing  if  they  please,  but  to  do  it  far  from 
public  pretexts,  in  the  nurseries  and  caverns  of  their 
own  selfhoods.  These  are  analogies  which  come 
indeed  from  the  great  Exemplar;  and  which  may 
tritely  teach  us  that  the  Divine  Man  doing  His  work 
against  all  evil,  that  is  to  say,  redeeming,  by  His  own 
proper  power,  by  His  own  right  hand  and  His  holy 
arm,  reaches  down  in  both  worlds  wherever  there  is 
a  human  heart,  and  would  fain  be  omnipotent  within 
it,  and  is  omnipotent  around  it. 


CVII. 


FREEDOM   AND   FREEWILL. 


The  freest  governments  can  evidently  receive  and 
apply  these  informations  more  readily  than  despotic 
states,  and  hence  the  New  Church  has  a  mission  of 
freedom  beyond  the  churches  of  the  past.  Internal 
freedom,  civil  and  religious  freedom,  medical  and 
legal  freedom,  social  freedom,  are  essential  to  her 
ultimate  life ;  so  that  the  frontier  of  the  individual 
man  shall  be  as  large  and  secure  as  possible.  All 
these  difficult  things  she  will  steadfastly  plead  until 
they  are  obtained.  The  various  professions  espe- 
cially will  be  her  servants  and  not  her  masters, 
although  they  have  been  hard  masters  to  the  old 
societies;  and  in  being  ministers,  not  lords,  they  Avill 
gain  their  freedom,  and  receive  the  influx  of  light 
which  belongs  to  each.  Freedom  has  often  been 
based  upon  the  rights  of  man,  and  supposed  to  be 
compatible  with  merely  material  existence  developed 
into  morals  ;  and  to  be  a  flower  growing  out  of  the 
hard  ground  of  necessity.    But  how  matter  can  have 


any  rights  without  fighting  for  them,  it  is  difficult  to 
say-  in  which  case  the  resultant  freedom  is  but  the 
rule'  of  the  strong  man  until  the  stronger  man  comes. 
This  is  not  the  freedom  of  the  new  dispensation. 
That  freedom  is  first  the  freewill  continually  given 
from   heaven;    existing,   and   to   be   respected   and 
guided,  from  babyhood  upwards.     It  is  the  right  ot 
man  by  the  Lord;  the  perpetual  creation  and  pre- 
servation of  the  will.     As  families  and  states  open 
and  improve,  it  comes  forth  successively,  and  consti- 
tutes the   rights  of  man  among   his   kindred  and 
compeers,  his  rights  of  citizenship,  and  his  fraternal 
rights  with  all  men  whatever.    Crime  impairs  it  fvo 
tmioM'^  does  not  remove  it  inwardly;  the  prisoner 
has  his  freewill,  and  all  his  rights  as  a  prisoner. 
Thus  the  whole  procession  of  liberties,  and  the  out- 
side fact  of  national  freedom,  are  rivers  which  run 
out  of  the   affluents   of  individual   freewills ;    and 
therefore  the  truths  of  the  doctrine  of  freewill  are 
the  witnesses  and  judges  of  the  state  of  nations. 
And  each  nation  in  its  laws  and  ordinances,  and  m 
the  habits  of  society  founding  them  and  founded  upon 
them,  shows  its  estimation  and  value  of  the  indi- 
vidual conscience,  which  stands  with  the  freewill  in 

the  centre. 

Of  course  there  are  great  circumstances  which 
seem  to  oppress  for  a  time  the  national  and  indi- 
vidual freewill,  among  the  most  obvious  of  which  are 
war  and  civil  war.  But  if  these  are  necessary  and 
good,  as  for  the  defence  of  nations  and  sacred  rights 
they  may  be,  their  reasonableness  enables  subjects 
and  citizens  to  will  them  freely,  and  then,  if  a  nation 
rises  as  one  man  against  an  aggressor,  the  military 
state  with  its  terrible  harness  becomes  simply  an 
embattled  freedom.     It  must  however  be  looked  to. 


426 


E  C  CLE  SI  AS  TIC  ISMS, 


E  CCLESIASTICISMS, 


427 


\ 


that  that  state  is  not  confirmed  as  a  habit;  but 
that  arms  are  gradually  put  aside  when  their  work 
is  done. 


CVIII. 


ECCLESIASTICISMS. 


The  present  world  is  also  cumbered  with  other 
establishments,  some  of  which  require  careful  respect 
because  they  have  come  down  from  the  past,  and 
are  like  vessels  with  crews  of  living  souls  on  board, 
who  would  be  wrecked  if  the  planks  beneath  their 
feet  were  taken  away.    England  has  a  duty  of  caution 
to  such  establishments.     But  she  has  also  a  steady 
and  inevitable  policy  of  gradually  closing  her  rela- 
tions with  them.    Situated  as  they  are  now,  they  are 
in  the  same  position  to  the   outlying  life  of  the 
people,  that   the  gathered  spirits  of  the  departed 
centuries  occupied  to  the  whole  earth  before  the  last 
judgment;   they  stand  more  or  less  between   tlie 
nation  and  the  light  of  heaven.     They  occupy  an 
imaginary  upper  region  of  privilege,  conceit,  immo- 
bility, and  pretended  right  of  domination;  they  draw 
wealth  and  make  hierarchy  where  they  ought  to 
make  humility  and  teach  righteous  administration  as 
a  divine  thing  to  the  rich  and  the  powerful,  and  to 
all  people ;  and  to  say  the  least  they  are  out  of  the 
best  freewill  and  rationality  of  the  country.     They 
are   standing   reasons   for   non-examination   of  the 
highest  subjects;   and  '^Behold  I   keep  all  things 
old,"  is  their  chorus.     New  truth  is  despoiled  of  its 
chance  by  their  working;  and  has  longer  to  wait 
because  of  them.     It  may  be  said  as  a  rule,  that 


churches  and  fixed  institutions  paid  for  maintaining 
opinions,  are  a  hardness  and  obstruction  in  a  state; 
they  hinder  its  respiration  and  its  functions,  being 
unable  to  expand  with  the  general  inspiration;  they 
call  perpetual  attention  to  themselves;  and  in  short 
they  are   religious,    social,    and    political    tumours, 
which  absorb  useful   lives,  make  the  body  politic 
seem  larger,  but  diminish  its  good  temper,  and  im- 
pair its  efficiency  for  good,  and  its  power  of  combat 
against  evil.     To  those  who  believe  in  a  new  dis- 
pensation, it  is  obvious  that  state  patronage  of  the 
dispensation  which  has  passed  away,  and  bonuses  of 
millions  of  money  for  subscription  to  its  articles,  is 
one  of  the  worst  laches  against  freewill,  and  against  ^'a 
clear  stage  and  no  favour,"  which  can  be  perpetuated. 
On  the  other  hand  no  reasonable  Christian  wishes 
to  destroy  any  church,  but  rather  desires  to  commit 
churches  to  their  own  responsibility  and  their  own 
freedom  and  career,  and  to  hand  them  out  of  govern- 
ment to  the  management  of  those  who  belong  to 
them.     If  they  believe  they  are  the  successors  of 
the  Apostles,   their  establishment  by  the  state  is 
not  necessary  to  that  belief;  they  can  carry  it  in 
their  bosoms  and  into  their  churches  wherever  they 
are,  and  no  one  will  hinder  their  devotion.     Least  of 
all  will  the  New  Church  attempt  to  interfere  with 
it,  excepting  by  the  fair  way  of  explaining  its  errors 
in  public.     Swedenborg  stated  his  expectation  that 
his  doctrines  would  be  preached  through  the  churches. 
This  can  hardly  mean  the  churches  as  established  by 
law.      In  his  day,  dissent  had  not  attained  to  its 
present  proportions.     It  was  in  the  background,  and 
was  not  a  prominent  element  in  the  country.     He 
mentions  the  spiritual  conditions  of  various  sects,  the 
Moravians,    Quakers   and   the  like,    but  he  never 


428 


ECCLESIASTICISMS, 


ECCLESIASTICISMS. 


429 


charges  their  separation  from  the  national  churches 
as  a  vice;  or  judges  them  on  any  grounds  but  their 
own  doctrines  and  practices.  It  is  their  allegiance 
to  heaven  that  he  questions,  not  their  allegiance  to 
Canterbury,  Rome,  or  Geneva.  His  writings  are 
neutral  on  the  question  of  church  and  dissent,  and 
only  pointed  against  theological  error  and  evil.  The 
inference  may  fairly  be,  that  he  expected  the  clergy 
of  all  denominations,  and  through  them  the  flocks, 
to  be  gradually  transformed  in  the  light  of  the  doc- 
trines of  the  New  Church. 

This  New  Church  has  no  hold  upon  apostolical 
succession.     If  such  a  thing  existed,  and  had  been 
valid,  the  end  of  the  dispensation  which  it  claimed  as 
its  own,  would  consummate  it,  and  put  it  aside.    The 
direct  regency  of  the    Lord  would    supersede  the 
stream  of  imposed  hands  in  priesthoods.     The  gifts 
of  the  Lord  flow  from  Him  as  a  source  through  what 
channels  he  wills.     Moreover,  no  succession  bridges 
over  supersession;  the  first  church  is  abolished  as  a 
centre,  and  as  a  once  divine  ordination  cannot  pass 
into  the  second  church  across  the  gulf  of  the  last 
judgment.      Ecclesiastical  foundations  are  not  now 
spoken  of,  but  churches  in  the  apocalyptic  sense,  as 
carrying  God's  commission  upon  earth,  and  serving 
as  the  basis  of  heaven  in  the  world.     Instead  then 
of  imposition    of  hands    from    the    Apostles,   and 
privileged  sacerdotalism  by  succession,  instead  of  an 
apostolical  aristocracy,  which  sits  above  the  laical 
human  race,  and  in  the  mystical  body  of  Christ, 
there  is  for  all  whom  it  may  concern,  apostolicity  of 
function  and  office,  an  apostolicity  derived  from  the 
Lord,  and  flowing  from  His  institution.     It  is,  that 
fit  men  however  chosen,  in  ministering  sacred  offices, 
are  helped  by  Him,  and  may  be  inspired  by  Him, 


for  ministerial  work.  And  as  this  is  high  work,  and 
visibly  asks  His  influx,  they  are  highly  helped  ac- 
cording to  the  post.  This  is  their  specialty,  their 
prayer,  and  their  expectation.  But  every  man  in 
every  other  function  is  similarly  helped  according  to 
his  function,  be  it  mean,  or  be  it  noble.  Tlie  dress 
and  attitude  of  the  use  with  the  will  in  it,  draw  the 
active  function  down  from  heaven.  This  distribution 
of  a  gift  for  every  office,  and  a  divine  aid  for  every 
duty,  amounts  for  those  who  accept  it,  to  a  general 
inspiration  of  society  in  all  its  callings,  and  does  not 
stop,  as  hitherto  supposed,  with  the  infilling  of  the 
Church  of  England :  it  irrigates  the  whole  duty  and 
day  of  man  from  the  Queen  upon  her  throne  to  the 
artisan  and  the  cotter. 

Nay  more,  as  Swedenborg  proclaims,  every  man 
is  a  church  in  its  least  form;  not  by  apostolical 
succession,  but  by  his  created  receptivity,  and  then 
his  reception  of  the  Church  above  in  his  reading  of 
the  Word  and  committing  it  to  daily  life.  The 
Lord  is  thus  His  own  direct  Apostle  in  giving  him 
his  cure  of  his  own  soul;  and  by  whatever  is  dis- 
interestedly good  in  him,  he  is  a  priest  from  the 
Lord. 

The  ^Miscussion,"  to  use  a  medical  phrase,  of 
these  sacerdotal  swellings  and  obstructions,  is  vital 
for  the  spiritual  need  of  the  English  people,  and  will 
ensure  a  comparatively  peaceful  arena  for  the  de- 
scent and  dissemination  of  new  truth.  But  the 
clearance  which  enables  the  nation  to  breathe  freely 
not  only  requires  to  be  applied  to  the  theological  head, 
but  it  must  come  lower  down,  and  rid  the  body  and 
the  members  of  the  grievous  weight  of  state-estab- 
lished and  state-privileged  professions.  This  has  been 
said  before,  but  it  rises  up  in  the  subject  with  fresh 


^3o  ECCLESIASTICISMS. 

urgency.    Here  again  there  is  no  question  of  destroy- 
ing  anything,  but  the  necessity  is  to  commit  every 
catling  to  its  own  maintenance  and  responsibility, 
not  to^'privilege  it,  to  pay  in  no  way,  direct  or  indirect, 
for  orthodoxy  or  belief  in  articles,  and  to  let  every 
man  practise  without  interference  of  law,  leaving 
his  competency  to  be  decided  only  by  his  employers, 
and  any  harm  he  does  to  be  answered  before  the 
ordinary  tribunals.     The  present  writer  has  dealt 
with  this  subject  in  a  small  treatise  on  a  Free  State 
and  Free  Medicine,  to  which  the  reader  is  referred. 
Since  those  pages  were  written,  the  centrahzation 
and  papacy  of  medicine  has  advanced  further  into 
the  state,  and  a  virtual  infallibility  has  been  claimed 
for   its   orthodoxies,  which   are    carried   forth   into 
terrible   compulsory   legislation.      The    evil   power 
that  has  been  partially  cast  down  from  the  clerical 
plane,  has  fallen  upon  the  lower  level  of  the  doctors, 
and  the  earth  is  troubled  with  their  use  of  it.     But 
besides  this,  the  same  judgment  must  pursue  state- 
patronage  of  corporations  such  as  those  which  are 
established  for  the  advancement  of  science,  because 
in  these  days  of  free  thought  and  expression,  no 
political  state  can   tell   how  such  bodies  will  use 
their   means,  or   be   responsible    for   the   purposes 
they  are  secretly  determined  to  carry  out.     Some 
of  them  exist,  judging  by  practice  and  fact,  and  the 
stream  of  opinion  which  flows  from  their  summits, 
for  the    prime   end   of  promulgating  atheism,  and 
insinuating   it   deeply  into   education.      The   state 
can  take  no  present  notice  of  this;  any  association 
of  scientific  persons  has  full  British  right  to  be  a 
collective  atheist.     But  what  the  state  fairly  must 
do,  is.  to  clear  itself  of  responsibility;  to  let  such 
scientists,    and    all    scientists,   manage    their    own 


ECCLESIASTICISMS, 


431 


house;  and  to  send  no  national  bread  of  support 
to  their  assemblies.  Above  all  to  withhold  its 
hand  from  any  ''endowment  of  research,"  which 
may  mean  countless  abominations.  Dischartering 
all  round  is  one  of  the  needs  of  a  not  distant  future. 
Full  spiritual  freedom,  with  its  gifts,  cannot  exist  in 
the  present  compromise.  It  is  not  sufficient  that 
dissent  is  allowed  to  exist  without  fear  of  fine  and 
punishment;  the  Church  must  be  disallowed  of  its 
privileo-es.  It  is  not  sufficient  that  unorthodox 
medicine  be  permitted  in  practice;  orthodox  medi- 
cine must  come  to  equality  with  it,  and  depend  on 
public  opinion  and  liking,  and  not  upon  charters 
and  fines.  Nor  is  it  enough  that  all  opinion,  theo- 
lof^ical  and  anti-theological,  be  allowed  expression; 
grants  and  subsidies  to  corporate  bodies  making 
them  part  and  parcel  of  the  state,  must  be  withheld, 
and  tumours  of  opinion  be  carefully  detached  and 
separated  from  the  national  life. 

This  is  a  work  of  time,  and  of  the  surgery  of 
statesmanship.  But  it  is  coming.  And  while  the 
state  has  much  to  do  in  it,  the  country,  which  is  the 
patient,  has  its  duties  to  itself.  Especially  so  in 
the  matters  of  medical  and  of  legal  freedom.  The 
duty  of  those  who  perceive  the  new  need,  is  to 
separate  themselves  from  the  old  way  as  wisely  and 
harmlessly  as  they  can;  to  be  ''the  peculiar  people" 
on  a  widening  scale  ;  and  to  band  themselves 
together  in  the  name  of  their  own  proper  freedom, — 
say  now,  from  physic  and  from  law.  They  must 
be  above  these  bodies,  and  use  them,  but  not,  as 
hitherto,  be  under  them,  and  be  made  use  of  by  them 
as  victims.  We  see  only  the  beginning  of  this. 
But  as  the  New  Church  descends,  numbers  will 
gradually  abjure  law,  enter  into  societies  calculated 


iM\ 


IM] 


«i 


432  ECCLESIASTICISMS. 

to  dispense  with  it  in  matters  of  property;  and  as 
honesty  widens,  the  nation  will  respect  simple  words 
and  declarations,  and  parchment  become  exceptional 
in  the  record  of  right.  The  greater  application  of 
these  things  can  come  by  no  outward  reform,  but 
from  centres  of  righteous  freewill  slowly  expanding, 
and  conquering  the  evils  of  society. 

Those    evils    are    mighty  beyond   what  any  un- 
inspired man  imagines;  the  whole  head  is  sick,  and 
the  whole  heart  is  faint.      Were  death   what  it 
seems    the  inheritance  the  dead  have  left  in  us,  is 
enormous  in  evil,  and  added  to  by  the  free  deeds  of 
each  succeeding  generation.     But  as  the  apparent 
dead  are  alive  in  the  spiritual  world,  and  the  evil 
kinf^doms  of  them  influence  all  those  who  summon 
them  by  corresponding  evils  of  their  own  on  eavtli, 
so  the  diseases  of  society  are  founded  in  the  deeper 
diseases  of  the  hells.     It  is  well  to  know  this,  and 
that  the  disorders  of  this  world  are  only  removable 
by  its  rec^eneration.     The  writings  of  Swedenborg 
embody  luminous  confirmations  of  what  the  spiritual 
world  is  on  the  side  of  wickedness.     Nothing  so 
terrible  has  been  hitherto  conceived  by  mankind. 
Dante  has  visioned  a  general  hell  peopled  by  a  few 
leadino-   vices  not  sounded  to  the  bottom  ;    awtu 
indeed'  in  its  punishments;    and  he  has  fashioned 
glooms  and  fires  in  its  atheistical  abyss  ;  types  and 
terrors  of  show,  filled  with  divine  vengeance.     13ut 
Swedenborg  in  veritable  explorations  commissioned 
for  divine  ends,  has  seen  that  self-love,  and  love  ot 
the  world,   comprise  larger  and  deeper  caverns  ol 
evil    the  inhabitants  of  which  are  as  multitudinous 
as  the  selfhood  of  this  world  is  predominant  in  its 
upper  air      His  revelations  of  what  embodied  and 
inworlded  evil  is,   with  no  apparent  imagmation. 


ECCLESIASTICISMS. 


433 


exceed  all  imagination.      The    intentions    of   the 
heart  are  carried  out  there,  and  bring  their  own 
repression.     It  is  the  realm  of  consequences,  and 
of  the  permitted  vengeance  of  man  upon  man  by 
spiritual  closeness  of  retribution.     Cruelty  to  others 
is  the  method  of  the  abysses,  one  under  the  other. 
Nay,  in  the  descriptions  of  Swedenborg,  vivisection 
of  each  other  is  a  means  of  punishment,  and  per- 
haps is  their  instrumentation  of  the  love  of  truth, 
and  their  organon  for  learning  the  neighbour's  facts. 
The  like  has  been  the  case  on  earth  in  inquisitions 
and  in  legal  courts,  and  it  cannot  be  surprising  that 
it  exists  where  bad  human  natures  have  all  the  play 
that  is  compatible  with  their  consequences,  and  with 
their  check  from  others.     It  does  exist,  and  is  tem- 
pered by  angelic  presences,  and  by  the  overruling 
mercy  of  the  Lord.     It  exists  because  freewill  can- 
not be  broken.     Because  evil  is  loved  supremely, 
though  its  consequences  are  not  loved.     It  exists 
to  the  devastation,  what  Swedenborg  calls  the  vas- 
tation,  of  evil ;  that  at  length  it  may  be  reduced  to 
passivity,  and  expect  punishment  as  the  certainty  of 
crime;  that  hell  may  be  tamed  and  domesticated, 
so  far  as  its  nature  permits. 

A  corollary  is  that  cruelty  on  earth,  done  under 
any  pretext,  opens  the  unhappy  abodes,  and  draws 
forth  their  inhabitants;  and  very  especially,  cruelty 
done  in  the  name  of  the  love  of  truth,  for  that  pro- 
fanes truth  ;  and  cruelty  done  in  the  name  of  tlie  love 
of  serving  mankind,  for  that  adulterates  good.  It 
is  better°to  be  cruel  with  no  pretexts,  than  to  defile 
all  holy  virtue  by  claiming  it  as  an  ally  of  devilish 
practice. 


2e 


434 


CRUELTIES, 


CRUELTIES. 


435 


II 


m 


cix. 


CRUELTIES. 


This  matter  of  cruelty,  as  a  formula,  is  the  begin- 
ning  and  the  end   of  the   present   treatise.     And 
indeed     cruelty,    disregard     of    the    feelings    and 
fleshly  heart  of  others,  is  one  ultimate  expression  of 
every  sin  and  of  every  crime,  and  embraces  cruelty 
to  one's  own  soul,  and  one's  own  future.     Accord- 
ingly the  sphere  of  cruelty  in  its  commoner  forms 
almost  pervades  human  nature  :  men  are  born  from 
the  past  generations  insentient  to  a  great  extent  to 
the  pains  of  animals,  and  of  other  people.     The  boy 
with  insects  and  birds  and  bird's  eggs,  is  not  awaie 
in  what  he  inflicts  that  there  is  any  life  in  the  crea- 
tures beyond  the  liveliness  of  his  own  amusement; 
it  is  a  revelation  to  many  boys  that  a  cockchafer  on 
a  pin  is  not  a  pleasure  to  all  concerned.     He  has  to 
be  told  what  he  is  doing  ;  and  gradually  to  learn 
that  his  own  laws  of  suffering  are   extensive,  and 
that  he  is  not  the  only  piece  of  quick  flesh  in  the 
universe.     Boys'  schools  may  be  different  now  from 
what  they  were  in  this  writer's  school  days,  when 
dear  John  Charles  Thorowgood  was  king,   but  it  is 
to  be  feared  that  few  of  them  grapple  at  the  founda- 
tion with  the  universal  tendency  in  the  young  mind  to 
experiment    upon    living    creatures ;    or    teach  as 
severely  as  arithmetic  is  taught,  that  any  wanton- 
ness towards   animals   is   a   horrible   thing.      This 
knowledge    could    easily    be    imparted,    as    it    is 
grievously  required  ;    and  the  meanness,   stupidity, 
and  nascent  ferocity  of  all  cruelty  to  what  is  alive, 


become  a  canon  of  honour  and  tenderness  in  any 
school  whose  master  determined  to  carry  out  that 
fundamental  tone.     If  this  were  accomplished,  and 
the  teaching  seconded  by  parents  and  sisters  in  the 
home,  the  school  would  furnish  to  the  next  generation 
a  race  of  young  men  who  would  bring  a  new  con- 
science   into    field    sports;    some    now    practised 
would  be  allowed,   and  some  disallowed ;  and  the 
fairness  of  human  nature  to  which  common  human- 
ity is   akin,  would   begin  to   be   touched   with   a 
religion   reaching  kindly  down   towards  all   living 
creatures.      Destruction   of   animals  for  sport  and 
skill  would   be  questioned    by    the   religious   con- 
science, which  it  seldom  is  in  any  pulpit  yet,  and 
a  new  pity  be  born,  always  with  rationality  as  its 
guide;  for  destruction  is  a  part  of  tenderness  when 
rightly  viewed  ;  and  the  guarding  of  the  sheepfold 
involves  the  killing  of  the  wolf     But  destruction 
for  the  pleasure  of  it  would  not  stand  its  ground. 
And  especially  the  raid  of  travellers  upon  the  great 
lives  of  the  hippopotamus,  the  giraffb,  the  ostrich, 
the  elephant,  and  other  such  creatures,    would   be 
forbidden,  unless  real  reasons,  and  not  wantonness, 
prompted    it ;    forbidden    as  a  brigandage  of  man 
upon  the  domains  of  nature  ;  as  an  extermination  of 
the  generous  joys  of  lake  and  plain  and  forest ;  as  a 
desolation  of  the  world  of  forms,  and  an  extinction 
of  most   pregnant  symbolic  organism  which  exists 
not  without  a  divine  reason  in  the  balance  of  things. 
Travels  that  recorded  such  doings,   even  if  princes 
did  them,  would  be  under  the  ban  of  public  opinion  ; 
and  a  man  who  fired  a  reckless  bullet  at  a  hippo- 
potamus which  he  could  not  use,  or  give  any  reason 
but  his  own  cruel  liking  for  the  death  of,  would  be 
placed  in  scale  with  him  who  should  try  his  gun  upon 


?i  1 


w 


436 


CRUELTIES, 


a  Bushman  or  a  Caffir.  Sport  and  game  of  this 
kind  would  be  in  the  pillory,  and  descriptions  and 
engravings  of  them  abominations  to  the  home. 
This  will  come  to  be  the  tone  of  British  opinion: 
no  destruction  for  destruction's  sake,  or  for  mere 
amusement's  sake  ;  or  for  any  but  good  reasons, 
which  are  necessarily  humane  reasons.  The  begin- 
ning of  this  must  be  in  boys'  schools.  Hitherto, 
from  ancient  history,  cruelty  unchallenged  is  read 
in  the  daily  lessons  ;  the  antiquities  of  Rome  feed 
the  mind  out  of  the  horrors  of  the  Coliseum,  so 
delightful  to  the  then  state  ;  the  Christian  wave, 
the  New  Church  light,  coming  through  the  school- 
master, must  meet  and  confront  the  traditional 
cruelty,  and  brand  it  as  mean,  foul,  and  bloody ;  and 
prepare  the  way  for  the  man's  sense  of  responsibility 
to  the  gentle  animals,  and  for  his  just  treatment  of 
all  life.  Thus  alone  can  this  master-passion  of 
cruelty  be  stopped  in  its  general  uprising,  and  be 
driven  into  shame.  It  is  a  great  thing  not  to  salve 
over  the  ''  damned  spot ;"  or  to  think  that  it  will  cure 
itself  as  the  boy  becomes  the  man,  and  his  home  affec- 
tions are  born.  It  does  not  cure  itself,  but  passes 
into  its  collective  form,  and  becomes  respectable  and 
unassailable,  first  as  rights  of  fun,  then  as  rights 
of  sport,  and  last  and  worst  as  rights  of  science. 
Parliaments  laugh  when  humanity  to  animals  is 
under  discussion;  the  nests  of  little  birds  are  jokes 
to  legislators,  who  yet  have  comfortable  nests  of 
their  own,  and  are  tender  to  every  tendril  of  their 
own  hereditary  selfhoods.  The  school  training  is 
to  blame  for  this.     The  first  thing  for  the  school- 

• 

master  himself  is,  to  know  tliat  human  nature  is 
corrupt,  and  in  its  first  dealings  with  others  almost 
universally  cruel ;  and  that  it  needs  to  be  taught 


THE  VASTATION  OF  EVIL. 


437 


the  laws  of  kindness,  which  are  divme  truths,  and 
clearly  do  not  come  by  inheritance  of  nature. 

The  whole  matter,  in  the  habits  it  has  engendered 
in  society,  requires  wise  and  not  merely  sentimentel 
treatment ;  for  at  present  it  would  be  almost  as  difli- 
cult  to  abolish  the  fox-hunter,  or  the  hare-hunter,  or 
the  otter-hunter,  as  to  uproot  the  episcopacy ;  so 
deeply  founded  are  these  institutions  m  the  com- 
plicity of  the  country.     Such  social  states  depend 
upon  the  hardness  of  the  public  conscience;  and  have 
tended  to  brutalize  all  minds,  being  rankly  carnal. 
There  is  an  irresistible  pressure  agamst  them  now. 
New  heavens  and  a  new  earth  oppose  them;  an 
elephant-hunt  will  one  day  be  as  intolerable  to  a 
n-w  Encrland,  as  a  Eoman  man-and-beast-fight,  or 
a  Spanish  bull-fight,  is  already  horrible,  and  by  no 
pleading  or  pretext  could  be  brought  into  an  arena 
in  London. 


ex. 


THE   VASTATION   OF   EVIL. 

One  of  the  evils  engendered  by  cruelty  is  humani- 
tarianism  in  a  false  sense.  This  is  the  doctrme  of 
the  toleration  and  petting  of  evil  as  a  means  to  the 
cure  of  evil.  Some  minds  draw  no  distmction  be- 
tween slaying  a  hippopotamus  for  sport,  and  kilhng 
a  mosquito,  or  a  poisonous  serpent,  for  safety. 
Clearly  the  latter  is  a  duty,  though  pain  be  inflicted, 
and  blood  be  shed  in  the  doing  of  it.  Therefore  let 
it  be  done  quickly  and  kindly.  Also  clearly  the 
former  is  no  duty  but  a  crime.  The  state  of  mind 
which  confounds  the  two  appears  to  regard  pain  as 


.i 


I^H  < 


;     * 


438 


THE  VA STATION  OF  EVIL. 


the  only  evil,  and  bloodshed  as  equally  sickenlno" 
whether  it  is  necessary  or  not.  This  soft-headed 
soft-heartedness  knocks  at  the  door  of  Parliament 
and  clamours  to  be  made  effective  by  legislation. 
The  most  atrocious  criminals,  a  whole  human  degree 
worse  than  ravening  beasts  (which  indeed  are  never 
bad,  but  only  evil),  are  to  have  nothing  done  to 
them  to  teach  them  that  human  skins  have  feeling's. 
and  are  never  to  be  put  out  of  the  world  because 
of  the  value  of  human  life.  It  might  rather  be 
thought  that  they  should  be  expunged  from  hence, 
because  human  life  is  valuable  here,  and  devilish 
life  not  valuable  or  tractable. 

Swedenborg  throws  light  upon  these  questions, 
and  his  works  in  the  future  will  be  deeply  consulted 
in  the  framing  of  criminal  legislation.  The  punish- 
ments of  the  spiritual  world  are  of  two  effects, 
reformatory,  where  reformation  is  possible ;  and 
"  vastative,"  devastating,  where  it  is  not.  The  first 
consist  of  temptations,  trials,  victories ;  long  and 
great  sufferings  under  severe  circumstances  from 
which  escape  is  not  given;  apparent  misfortunes 
and  losses  of  all  life  and  goods;  revelations  of  hell 
within,  and  despairs :  falling  and  rising  states ;  and 
through  all,  the  voluntary  detachment  of  the  man 
from  the  evils  of  bis  life  and  nature;  until  the 
divine  charity  and  wisdom  of  the  Lord  with  the 
man's  freewill  unimpaired  dare  admit  him  purged 
and  purified  into  heaven.  The  man's  Lord's  Prayer 
can  then  be  granted,  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation, 
but  deliver  us  from  evil."  In  former  days  this  process, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  has  required  ages;  but 
since  the  last  judgment  it  is  quickened,  and  seldom 
lasts  more  than  thirty  years  of  mundane  time,  or  a 
generation.     The  power  of  the  Second  Coming  of 


THE  VASTATION  OF  EVIL. 


439 


the  Divine  Humanity  in  its  omnipotence,  compels 
all  minds  to  swifter  issues  of  good  and  evil;  a  neces- 
sity which  finds  its  consequence  and  correlation  m 
the  quick  events  of  the  present  day. 

The  second  set  of  effects  wrought  upon  evil  after 
death,  is  wrought  by  evil  itself,  and  means  its  final 
triumphs   over   human   faculties.      These  comprise 
vastations,  devastations;  in  their  consequences,  wast- 
ings  away.     They  are  the  gradual  destructions  ot 
men  as  spiritual  organisms,  down  to  the  level  which 
the  evil  has  successfully  invaded,  and  to  which  the 
freewill  has  been  voluntarily,  by  acts  of  life,  extin- 
guished    All  the  great  loves  of  the  heart  when 
thus  completely  de-natured  and  perverted,  become 
subjects  of  the  vastation;  they  are  killed  down,  and 
die  out     They  are  under  "  the  second  death,    and 
malignant  spiritual  diseases  and  insanities  occupy 
their  places.     Conjugial  love,  for  instance,  if  wilful  y 
perverted  and  outraged  in  the  man,  is  ultimately 
destroyed,  and  through  various  stages  of  monstrous 
lusts,  each  an  organic  form  in  the  spiritual  body,  it 
burns  its  loins  away  into  final  apathy  and  gloom. 
So  also  the  love  of  God  and  the  neighbour,  the  love 
of  use,  and  in  short,  the  affections  which  are  human 
life     They  are  turned  into  hatreds  opposite  to  the 
first  nature  given,  and  then,  according  to  their  depth, 
into  deaths  and  extinctions.     This  takes  place  by 
acts  and  efforts  and  habits  of  evil  life,  and  by  their 
repression  in  their  own  hells.     It  is  to  be  repeated 
that  these  loves  are  true  orgamsms,  spiritual  sub- 
stances in   forms,  and   not  abstractions;    they  are 
the  spirit  of  the  man,  bodily,  pressing,  and  capable 
of  pressure.     The  man  that  is  left  after  the  pressure, 
is  still  a  freewill ;  he  freely  chooses  to  be  what  he  is, 
and  calls  round  him  the  divine  necessity  of  his  state. 


440 


THE  VASTATION  OF  EVIL, 


THE  VASTATION  OF  EVIL, 


441 


to  stay  where  he  is.     He  cannot  change  because  he 

will  not;    because  with  constant  will  he  kills  the 

faculty  of  change.     So  he  is  the  permanent  form  of 

his  own  evil.     By  the  suicide  of  the  affections,  the 

intellect   is   vastated    also,    and   crass   stupidity  to 

truths,  and  immersion  in  the  falsities  which  favour 

the  evil  state,  result.     Evil  arts  and  cunning  are 

left,  and  cruelty  and  craft  is  the  path  of  life.     The 

effect  in  both  cases,  the  evil  and  the  good,  is  as  of  a 

trial  and  judgment  always  proceeding,  with  sentence 

on  lives  proclaimed  by  facts.     In  the  evil,  all  that 

seemed  good  outwardly,  is  in  mercy  taken  away,  and 

profanation  and  torture  as  far  as  possible  are  avoided; 

the  infernal  man  is  not  rent  between  good  and  evil, 

but  is  simplified  into  his  mere  selfhood;  yet  also 

maintained  against  further  degradation  and  vastation 

by  punishment  and  fear.     From  the  good,  their  evils 

which  were  outward,  are  gradually  removed,  and 

they  become  of  one  piece,  good  from  the  Lord,  who 

then  founds  heaven  upon  them  and  in   them.      In 

both  cases  appearances  are  put  aside,  and  reality  is 

reached;  and  the  man  is,  not  as  he  was  to  society, 

but  as  he  w^as  and  is  to  God;  a  heaven  in  the  least 

form,  or  a  hell  in  the  least  form. 

These  revelations  concerning  the  state  of  all  the 
men  and  women  who  have  passed  out  of  the  natural 
world  into  the  spiritual,  are  distant  from  the  present 
world  by  the  mixture  of  good  and  evil  here  ;  by  the 
shows  and  appearances  of  mankind  in  order  that  evil 
may  wear  the  garments  of  good  and  enjoy  its  estate ; 
by  the  force  and  necessity  of  respectability  as  the 
proprietor  of  advantage.  And  yet  the  facts  now 
revealed  are  correlate  with  all  justice,  and  with  the 
conservation  of  love,  wisdom,  truth  and  intelligence. 
For  the  best  aim  of  society  is  that  innocent  weakness 


be  upheld  and  strengthened  with  redeemmg  power, 
and  cleared  of  the  external  blemishes  on  its  mward 
purity     And  also  that   wickedness  be  unmasked, 
and  its  deeds  whether  of  business  or  crime,  done 
from  the  heart,  be  stripped  bare  of  pretexts    and 
convicted,  named,  and  legally  and  socially  judged, 
and  the  person  put  into  his  consequences.     This  the 
spiritual  world  accomplishes  by  the  divine  law  of 
correspondences.     The  brain  and  heart  and  face  and 
hands  and  body  and  garments  are  there  re-made  out 
of  the  evil  loves  which  are  left  as  dregs,  or  out  of  the 
good  affections  which  the  Lord  forms  and  fills  m  the 

angels.  , 

Although  however  the  case  is  purposely  obscured 

in  society ,''it  is  written  out  in  one  set  of  facts  which 
correspond   to   the   triumph   of  good,   or   of  evil; 
namely,  in  the  history  of  diseases.     These  naturally 
tend  to  cure,  or  to  the  putting  aside  of  disordered 
states  and  obstructions,  and  to  purification  and  re- 
covery ;  or  else  to  the  victory  of  the  disease  over  the 
life,  and  the  extinction  of  the  body.      Now  heaven 
is  recovery  under  the  Great  Physician,  and  health 
from  His  holiness  received ;  and  hell  is  the  second 
death,  namely,  of  all  that  is  good  and  true  in  the 
spiritual  organism.     And  there  is  here  a  perfect  cor- 
relation of  these  final  states,  through  the  constant 
vicissitude  and  play  of  disease  and  health,  life  and 
death,  in  the  natural  organism. 

There  is  one  exception  to  the  partition  between 
good  and  evil  efi*ected  in  men  after  death  ;  namely, 
in  the  case  of  hypocrites,  who  have  mingled  good 
and  evil  in  themselves  inextricably.  Theirs  is  the 
continual  rending  and  tearing,  bodily  tearing,  of 
intimate  opposed  forces,  and  of  intimate  spiritual 
destruction  to  the  affections.     They  are  not  men, 


442  PHYSIOLOGY  ON  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

says  Swedenborg,  but  become  flitting  fantasies  of 
men,  no  human  substance  remaining,  but  its  flutter- 
ing rags  and  tatters.     They  are  the  final  battlefields 
of  good  and  evil,  which  mutually  tear  them  to  pieces 
and  leave  them  as  shadows.  ' 


CXI. 


PHYSIOLOGY   ON   GOOD   AND   EVIL. 

Nor  must  it  be  omitted  that  the  physiology  of 
health  is  in  thorough  correlation  with  the  facts  here 
brought  to  light  concerning  the  organic  process 
which  occurs  with  men  and  women  in  the  otlier  life. 
Only  the  scale  is  mighty  and  composite,  not  in- 
dividual. In  the  first  case,  that  of  the  single  human 
body,  the  life  is  maintained  by  continual  eliminations 
and  purifications.  Tlie  particles  of  the  blood  and 
the  cells  of  every  tissue,  the  organic  "  leasts "  of 
every  organ,  are  continually  cleared  of  decayed  and 
eflTete  material,  which  is  conveyed  by  appointed 
channels  out  of  the  system.  Great  organs,  of  selec- 
tion, of  judgment,  of  sentence,  and  of  execution, 
through  which  all  the  fluids,  old  and  new,  pass,  have 
central  places  in  the  economy.  The  liver,  the 
kidneys,  the  skin  and  the  lungs,  also  the  whole  tract 
of  the  intestines,  occur  at  once  as  constituting  these 
benches  of  fleshly  judgment.  Upon  the  complete 
justice  of  their  work  depends  the  health  of  the  body. 
They  separate  the  old  elements  from  the  new,  and 
the  good  from  the  bad. 

It  has  often  been  declared  above,  that  the  spiritual 
man  inhabits  the  human  body  because  he  cor- 
responds  to   it.      There   is   therefore    a    spiritual 


PHYSIOLOGY  ON  GOOD  AND  EVIL.         443 

organism  in  the  individual,  and  liver,  kidneys,  skin, 
luntrs  and  intestines  occur  again  in  that  organism, 
these  being  the  forms  of  spiritual  affections  and 
minds  •  and  the  complete  embrace  of  them  into  one 
form  of  use  is  the  spiritual  body.  The  same  elimma- 
tions  and  purifications  go  on  in  this  body,  but  each 
in  a  spiritual  degree  ;  good  and  evil  in  their  ineffable 
variety  of  detail,  being  the  substances  worked  upon 
by  the  forms  now  under  question. 

But  more  than  this,  as  organs  are  grouped  in  the 
individual  man,  so  individual  men  themselves  are 
mnima,  leasts,  in  humanity ;  and  in  the  spiritual 
world  they  are  organized  into  societies,  each  whereot 
is  a  greater  man,  an  organic  unit  in  the  body  to 
which  he  belongs.     The  human  body  is  the  ultimate 
seal  towards  which  all  the  order  flows,  and  m  which 
it  closes,  and  where  it  is  visibly  represented.     Thus 
there  are  the  men  of  the  kidneys,  the  men  of  the 
liver,  also  of  the  lungs,  the  skin,  the  intestines ;  and 
so  forth.     So  heaven  is  the  most  perfect  form  of 
man ;  the  organization  of  all  the  forms  of  good  and 
truth,  of  angelic  love  and  wisdom,  into  a  greatest 
Man,  a  Maximus  Homo.    This  must  not  be  under- 
stood as  a  colossal  carnal  figure,  or  as  a  form  visible 
to  any  angelic  sense  ;  it  is  the  oneness  of  the  salva- 
tion of  humanity  in  the  embrace  and  governance  of 
the  Divine  Humanity,  apprehensible  and  credible  by 
spiritual  and  then  rational  thought,  but  seen  only  by 
the  Lord.     Swedenborg  sometimes  was  allowed  to 
see  a  society  as  one  man,  but  none  but  the  Divme 
Man  can  see  man  in  his  oneness. 

As  heaven  is  by  spiritual  organism  one  man,  so 
hell,  by  inverse  organism,  is  one  monster.  Mean- 
while, every  man  and  woman  who  dies,  feeds  the 
spiritual  world  with  his  own  proper  character,  just 


444  PHYSIOLOGY  ON  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

as  a  particle  of  food,  good  or  bad,  feeds  or  nourishes 
the  body.     From  the  moment  of  resurrection,  wliich 
begins  at  death,  he  is  launched  in  the  lymphatic 
system  of  the  grand  man,  and  passes  into  its  outer 
organism  in  the  world  of  spirits,  the  intermediate 
state,  where  preparation  for  admission  to  heaven,  or 
to  hell,  is  urgent.     He  is  then  in  the  circulation 
though  not  in  the  substance  of  the  Maximus  Homo, 
The  vessels  of  this  circulation  are  limitaneous  organic 
events  of  trial  of  character,  great  moving  afFections, 
which  invite,  or  which  chase,  him  on.     He  does  over 
again  the  deeds  done  in  the  body.     He  enters  the 
veins  of  the  spiritual  Whole  with  all  his  heart  in  his 
career,  steering  through  his  midways,  self-guided,  or 
heaven-guided.     In  the  course  of  his  circulations, 
his   life's   love,  which   is   the   blood   of  his  blood, 
declares  itself,  and  loosens  from  it  what  is  adven- 
titious and  apparent;  and  the  great  eliminant  organs, 
themselves  societies  of  men  and  women,  lay  hold  of 
him,   and  separate  his  character   from  his  circum- 
stances.    This  is  not  done  without  spiritual  surgery; 
for  all  is  terribly  coherent  in  the  spiritual  organism. 
In  the  evil,  it  is  dire  punishment,  yet  no  arbitrary 
sentence  of  God,  but  organic  necessity  of  association. 
A  man  must  be  prepared  for  being  at  one  with  his 
fellows  whether  they  are  good  or  evil.     And  he  is 
prepared  by  the  modification  of  his  very  organism, 
until  it  becomes  consistently  man-like,  or  monstrous; 
and  this  is  then  completed  for  the  wicked  by  the 
eliminant  spirits,  that  is  to  say,  men  and  women,  who 
drive  him  to  his  finality,  and  through  the  meshes  of 
their  organic  laws,  excrete  him.     So  that  here  there 
is  a  perfect  parallelism  for  the  scientific  anatomical 
mind,  between  the  treatment  of  the  blood  which  is 
the  life  here,  and  of  the  love  which  is  the  life  and 


PHYSIOLOGY  ON  GOOD  AND  EVIL,         445 

the  man  both  here  and  in  the  spiritual  world.     The 
communis  sensus  between  the  two  cases  is  correspon- 
dent and  unexceptionable.  ^  ..  1       . 
We  see   from   this   illustration   what   a   disk   ot 
imacrery  of  truth  is  presented  in  the  world  by  the 
anatouiical  and  physiological  sciences  as  they  relate 
to  the  body  of  man;  for  heaven  and  hell  are  written 
out  in  diacrrams  upon  them;  and  the  processes  of  the 
body  point  exactly  with  tiny  fingers  to  the  immense 
processions  and  final  states  of  the  soul.    We  also  see 
the  importance  of  guarding   these  sacred  sciences 
from  the  chaos  of  protoplasm,  which  has  no  specula- 
tion in  its  eyeless  sockets;  and  keeping  them  to 
organic  forms  and  orders,   because  these,  and  not 
their  material  elements,  involve  the  truths  which 
represent  human  life.     Each  organ  is  a  word,  and 
to  break  into  it  beyond  its  ordered  boundaries,  is  to 
kill  the  face,  and  quench  the  voice,  with  which  it 

expresses  a  soul. 

A  further  truth  comes  out  in  the  correspondence 
of  bodily  nutrition  and  excretion.     In  the  organs 
morbid  materials  are  separated  with  violence  and 
pain.     For  instance,  acrid  and  bad  bile  causes  great 
suffering  as  it  passes   through   the  judgment   and 
execution   of  the   liver,   and   is   rejected   into   the 
intestines.     But  healthy  bile  flows  in  the  pleasure 
and  harmony  of  the  system.     The  body  labours  with 
the  one,  and  feels  release  with  the  other.     So  it  is 
with  the  rending  of  evil  persons  from  their  tem- 
porary associations  in  the  other  life;  it  is  pain  and 
rejection.    But  with  the  regenerate,  all  is  conserved, 
and  led  back  into  occupations  of  use.     But  ^jijjher 
the  excretion  of  individuals  begins  in  tlie  middle  ot 
circumstances   in   which   they   seem    to    be    safely 
housed  in  the  social  body;  just  as  impure  fluids. 


446       PUNISHMENTS  AND  EXECUTIONERS, 

though  in  the  depths  of  the  organs,  are  really  out  of 
the  true  pale  of  the  natural  body.  For  a  particle  of 
bad  bile,  once  laid  hold  of  by  the  liver,  is  in  custody, 
and  out  of  society.  Nay,  in  the  blood,  long  before 
the  liver  seizes,  it  is  in  surveillance  and  custody, 
and  segregated  from  the  general  ends  of  life.  All 
such  things,  though  unconsciously,  are  on  the  open 
way  to  the  last  portal,  guarded  as  they  go  down. 
And  so  it  is  with  evil  men  and  women  themselves 
hereafter;  they  think  they  are  passing  by  their  own 
way  to  the  heart  of  life,  but  are  being  led  by  ways 
they  know  not  of,  into  the  draught. 


CXII. 

PUNISHMENTS   AND    EXECUTIONERS. 

One  more  attestation  may  be  adduced  of  the  truth 
of  these  revelations  brought  to  us  by  Swedenborg; 
the  voice  of  the  conscience  sitting  over  against  the 
heart  proclaims  that  they  are  intimately  true  in  the 
present  life.  The  consciousness  of  men  is  intel- 
lectually in  correlation  with  them.  For  as  life  pro- 
ceeds, each  individual  becomes  more  and  more  him- 
self; tlie  forms  of  his  inward  personality  are  more 
pronounced,  and  his  character  stands  out  clearer 
from  externals  and  pretences.  If  he  is  an  evil  man, 
the  society  environs  him,  and  stops  him  of  crimes, 
yet  lie  does  evil  within  large  limits,  and  writes  down 
his  quality  on  the  world  in  signs  that  are  legible  to 
his  fellow-men.  These  signs  are  not  crimes  here, 
because  the  law  allows  them.  But  he  knows  what 
he  is,  and  in  his  heart,  and  its  imaginations,  he 
shapes  for  himself  a  final  body  of  purposes  which 


PUNISHMENTS  AND  EXECUTIONERS       447 

only  wait  to  be  carried  out  as  opportunity  occurs. 
Now  take  away  social  restraint,  and  emancipate  the 
old  spirit  into  its  full  career,  and  all  that  Sweden- 
borg has  depicted  follows  bodily  of  necessity.     The 
ruin  of  appearances,   and   vastation  from   without 
inwards,  are  effected.     The  ends  which  the  man  pro- 
poses dominate,  and  constitute  his  spiritual  organi- 
zation, and  they  destroy  his  affections  and  under- 
standing, and  re-create  him  into  a  mere  selfhood. 
At  times  when  he  is  opposed,  his  countenance  is  his 
passions.      He  still  has  abilities  for  carrying   out 
destruction;  but  no  faculties  that  are  not  contradic- 
tory to  the    Lord's  intentions;   none   that   do   not 
destroy  the  man  s  human  form. 

Seeing   the   persistence  of  evil  in  the  will,  and 
that  wisdom  must  calculate  upon  that  persistence ; 
that  it  exists  in  the  hells  from  the  first  fall  of  man- 
kind, and  has  an  evil  cosmos  for  its  universe;  that 
there    are    lakes     and    mountains    and    seas    and 
gehennas  of  mere  violence  and  evil,  it  is  clear  that 
ideas  of  progress  which  leave  out  this  fact  tend  to 
superficial    treatment    of    disordered    and    chaotic 
human  nature.     The  cure  of  the  thing  is  impossible, 
or  mighty  hell  would  not  be  its  lazar-house.     The 
constant    battle    against    it    in    ourselves   and   our 
societies,  and  the  wise  treatment  of  it,  are  the  only 
reasonable  courses.     Now,  it  is  because  Swedenborg 
alone  of  men  has  brought  its  problem  fully  under 
the  eye,  that  his  works  will  in  time  exert  a  com- 
manding power  over  criminal  legislation.     They  are 
indeed  "the  only  works  which  give  in  rational  con- 
nected series  of  truths  the  great  spiritual  laws  which 
reign  inside  morals,  and  make  them  profoundly  moral 
or  immoral.      They  shew  what  can  be  expected,  and 
what  cannot  be  expected,  of  the  human  race.     Also 


448        PUNISHMENTS  AND  EXECUTIONERS. 

what  is  curable,  and  what  is  incurable;  and  therefore 
where  compulsion  builds  the  walls  of  hell,  and  wliere 
safe  emancipation  opens  the  gates  of  heaven.  This 
being  so,  it  is  obvious  tliat  the  descent  of  the  New 
Church  to  the  earth  will  not  be  attended  by  the 
unmerciful  mercies  to  criminals  which  are  miraofes 
of  humanity  to  some  legislators  of  this  time.  Cor- 
poral punishment  is  therefore  not  likely  to  be  per- 
manently abolished  by  the  senates  of  the  future; 
but  rather  to  be  extended;  in  certain  cases,  even  to 
the  extent  of  vastation;  for  this  earth  itself  will 
gradually  become  more  approximated  to  the  spiritual 
world  above  it;  and  involve  swifter  passages  of  good 
and  evil,  and  the  likeness  of  more  final  states.  Nor 
is  it  likely  that  capital  punishment  can  involve  any 
real  inhumanity,  or  dis-naturing  of  good  men,  when 
it  is  known  that  the  removal  into  one  low  er  state 
under  another,  thus  second  deaths,  is  the  very  peo- 
pling of  the  hells.  In  many  cases  it  is  the  best  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  for  the  society  as  well  as  for  the 
criminal ;  it  clears  the  world  for  good,  and  commits 
the  wicked  to  complete  management.  And  as  for 
bodily  punishments,  the  spiritual  laws  appear  to 
prescribe  nothing  else;  for  every  outrage  done 
above,  every  selfish  cruelty  to  others,  every  violation, 
alters  the  body  of  the  doer,  and  devastates  it,  and  a 
precisely  mulcted  organization  is  worn  in  conse- 
quence. Also  in  regard  to  actual  stripes,  and  penal 
disciplines  of  many  kinds  recorded  by  Swedenborg, 
he  has  shown  that  there  are  commissioned  executors 
of  these  grievous  things;  and  cleared  away  the  com- 
mon thought  that  the  offices  of  punishment  degrade 
and  embrute  those  whose  business  it  is  to  fulfil  them. 
The  gentle  feeling  that  this  is  the  case  proceeds 
from   allowable   ignorance  of  the  nature  and  per- 


PUNISHMENTS  AND  EXECUTIONERS.       449 
•  .  n.P  of  evil  which  is  such  that  at  length  nothing 
but  penal  c      p  ^^^^  legislators  will  do 

"f  Wudv  SwedenboWs  revelations  about  the 
S  t  torn  tbe  flnal  faofs  »Mch  illu,tn.te  all  th, 
S  -executi      disciplines  however  ternble  canno 
!  themselves  be  evil  in  the  executioners.     If  it 
Unoulae  the  heart  of  the  judge  on  the  bench 
0     nfringe  his  real  loving-kindness    to  sentence  a 
prisoner  to  the  lash,  it  cannot  degrade  or  injure  the 
Clei'  to  administer  it.     It  is  social  surgery  with  its 
Tn  duty,  responsibility,  skill;  and  bemg  a  use,  it  is 
nltin  tlf  nature  of  things  that  it  sha  1  not  summon 
th   practitioner  to  do  it  well.     If  he  is  a  good  man 
Sels  no  enmity  to  his  wretched  patient,  though 
'    :tot  feel  pit  J  at  the  time  but  afterwards,  a„d 
he  has  in  every  stroke  a  prevailing  sense  of  service 
and  use.     And  when  he  is  at  home,  his  office  ask^ 

him  his  own  deserts;  and  ^^-^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
his  knees  to  pray  that  mercy  and  pity  may  be  m 

the  spirit  of  his  work. 

These  considerations  have  political  sigmficance  at 
present  •   for  it  is  a  fact  that  some  nations  ^dnch 

r  littl'e  for  human  life,  nations  where  inhumamty  to 
animals  and  scientific  violation  are  at  their  worst>t 
go,  out  of  spurious  compassion,  and  national,  mumc^ 
pal  and  domestic  complicity  w,th  cnme,  the  rnost 
atrocious  criminals;  and  thus  make  Pf -?«'*;  *^^^^^ 
and  murder  into  regular  calhngs  and  P-fe^  -J' 
and  constitute  the  robber  and  assassm  into  the  task- 
master over  industry  and  the  W^f  ^  P^  P^e 
prietors.     For  instance,  in  Italy  and  Sicdy,  there 
is  not  truth,  goodness,  skill  or  humanity  enough  to 
exterminate  brigandage;  though  it  exists  on  such  a 
scale,  that  this  could  easily  be  done  by  the  army 


450 


SLOW  RECEPTION  OF  TRUTH, 


followed  by  military  judges,  and  compelling  the 
whole  population  to  desist;  and  the  resulting  exe- 
cutions for  a  year  or  two  would  be  a  noble  spoil  of 
most  legitimate  war;  because  they  would  purge  the 
land  of  murderers,  and  set  peace  and  industry  and 
common  honesty  in  their  rightful  places.  But  in 
such  countries  nothing  is  admitted  or  known  of  the 
nature  of  spiritual  evil,  the  population  being  im- 
mersed in  it;  no  heart-combat  against  it  takes  place; 
league  and  compromise  are  sought  out  of  sheer 
cowardice;  the  tiger  is  fed  with  daily  sheep  to  keep 
down  his  hunger;  and  the  population  of  tigers  is 
stimulated,  and  grows  in  the  dens  of  the  evil  moun- 
tains. It  will  be  different  when  it  is  acknowledofed, 
from  the  experience  offered  in  the  New  Church,  that 
while  reformation  is  the  universal  end  of  punisli- 
ment,  the  extermination  of  persistent  evil  is  itself  a 
means  to  all  cure  that  is  possible,  and  the  only 
means  to  put  final  wickedness  into  the  divine  fitness 
of  things. 


CXIII. 

SLOW   RECEPTION   OP   TRUTH. 

Is  it  not  well  that  men  should  know  these  things, 
because  we  live  in  their  pressure  now,  and  pass 
bodily  into  them  when  we  die  ?  Whatever  is  not 
coincident  with  them  is  the  doctrinated  opinions  and 
articles  of  frail  mortals  uninspired  by  the  upper 
seats  of  truth. 

The  acknowledgment  of  such  principles  blessedly 
merciful  to  good,  and  terribly  merciful  to  evil,  is  not 
to  be  expected  to  take  place  quickly  in  the  world, 


SLOW  RECEPTION  OF  TR UTH.  4S i 

although  indeed  it  lies  under  their  power  when  God 
lases    and  they  are  ready  to  be  converted  mto 
forces  as  the  Divine  Providence  through  mans  free- 
ill  Dermits     But  their  march  upon  churches  and 
lo  ieties,  though  steady,  and  audible  to  an  ear  on 
the  proper  ground,  will  be  a  gradual,  time- long  and 
vorld-bng  work.      Swedenborg  foresaw  th.s    but 
could  give  no  date  for  the  public  acceptance  of  the 
truths  of  the  New  Jerusalem.     No  angel  could  tell 
him,  or  unseal  the  future.     Only  that  a  new  spirit 
was  poured  forth  over  men  and  events,  which  would 
not  chano-e  external  things  visibly,  but  would  oper- 
ate over  and  through  them,  and  that  the  opened 
heavens  from  the  Word  would  descend  and  represent 
themselves  upon  earth,  would  stir  combat  from  the 
world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  and  would  finally 
prevail      It  is  reported  that  a  curious  person  asked 
him  how  many  receivers  of   his  doctrines   there 
were  at  that  time;  to  which  he  answered,    'About 
twelve  in  this  world,  and  about  the  same  number  in 
the  world  of  spirits."     {N.  B.  The  world  of  spirits 
is  the  created  plane  into  which  nearly  all  men  and 
women  pass   when   they  die,  and  is  the   place  ot 
putting  off  external  states,  and  preparing  for  heaven, 
or  for  hell )     If  the  anecdote  is  correct,  as  it  may 
be,  it  illustrates  the  continuity  of  human  nature, 
and  shows  how  small  a  change  in  essentials  mere 
death   effects;    that  it   gives   no  new  fundamental 
knowledge  of  God  or  the  truths  of  God;_  no  fresh 
light  of  doctrines;  no  fresh  proofs  of  spirituality; 
no  certitude  of  immortality;  nor  any  revelation  ot  the 
principles  of  the  spiritual  world.     All  these  can  be 
acquired    here,   or   can  be   neglected   and   denied. 
And  as  in  the  latter  case  they  recede  here  mto  the 
darkness  of  the   mind   when   the  freewill  opposes 


452 


RESPECT  OF  MAN. 


RESPECT  OF  MAN, 


453 


them,  and  shuts  the  rational  understanding  ao-ainst 
them,  so  they  go  away  more  thoroughly  into  bodily 
mental  absence,  that  is,  into  spiritual  absence,  in  the 
other  life,  when  the  ruling  love  bids  them  depart 
from  beyond  its  frontiers  in  the  man.  Therefore 
seeing  what  men  are  now,  let  no  heart  be  disap- 
pointed if  the  great  wave  of  the  New  Jerusalem 
seems  long  in  breaking  on  its  own  shores  of  power ; 
if  it  is  apparently  an  unconverted  force.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  recognize  it,  and  to  know  that  it  comes  on. 
Multitude  and  rank  of  disciples  cannot  add  to, 
or  detract  from,  the  truth  and  intimate  pressure  of 
the  divine  mathesis. 


CXIV. 

RESPECT    OF    MAN. 

Meantime  the  new  freedom  of  thinking  and 
willing  first  declared  by  Swedenborg,  is  recogniz- 
able on  every  liand,  and  notably  so  in  the  spirit 
of  emancipation  which  shows  itself  in  the  bosom  of 
every  calling  and  profession  under  the  sun,  the 
reaction  against  which  is  the  compact  professional 
tyranny  and  centralization  attempted  to  be  fastened 
and  confirmed  by  governmental  means.  The  des- 
potism is  awake  as  well  as  the  liberty,  and  the 
girding  for  battle  against  all  people  s  light  and 
private  independence  is  going  on.  As  the  New 
Church  advances  through  truthful  lives,  the  esj^vit  de 
corps,  the  old  horny  clique  conscience,  will  begin  to 
be  cast  in  mighty  scalings,  in  many  repeals ;  the 
world  will  be  covered  with  abjurations ;  and  fresh 
and  tenderer  perception  of  truth  and  use  will  be 


uncovered,  and  lead  to  free  and  moveable  instead 
of  fixed  associations;  so  that  men  however  banded 
together  by  brotherly  thoughts,  will  no  longer  be 
medical,  or  legal,  or  clerical  serfs,  but  mentally  will 
become  individuals.     Being  nearer  to  heaven,  they 
will  be  above  their  own  professions  and  assembhes 
and  enrich  the  bodies  to  which  they  belong,  instead 
of  being,  as  now,  stunted  by  them.    In  short,  as  the 
life  and  love  of  the  higher  world  come  lower  down, 
the  enslavement  of  minds  and  souls   and  bodies, 
which  is  in  the  fashion  of  this  world,  will  pass  away, 
and  the  singleness  of  genius,  high  and  low,  humble 
and  great,  will  take  its  place.     The  new  freedom  ot 
thinking  and  willing  is   already   attested   by    the 
beginning   of  these   changes   in    human    societies. 
And  hence,  broadcast  in  our  islands,  the  old  pro- 
fessional man  is  dying,  and  the  individual  man  is 

re-born.  „  ,         .     ,        .    , 

Tocrether  with  the  restoration  of  the  private  mmd 
and  man  to  his  judgment   and  his   freedom,  the 
respect  of  man  for  man,  humanity  m  a  high  sense, 
advances  also,  and  the  world  is  filled  with  a  new 
fairness  and  dignity  of  intercourse.    The  meanest  can 
appeal  with  fresh  force  to  acknowledged  right,  and 
the  battle  of  an  advancing  society  is  fought  against 
the  old  enemies,  privilege  and  domination   not  trom 
rivalries  and  expediency  of  leaders,  not  from  party 
watchwords,  but  from  principles   of  honest   right. 
This  wave,  or  better,  this  influx  of  personal  rights 
flows   down  yet  further,  and  commands  a  just  and 
generous  treatment  of  the  external  world  as   our 
possession,  and  especially  of  all  its  living  creatures. 
It  is  given  for  our  tender  care,  and  herem  hes  our 
education  for  the  next  and  higher  life.  Whence  does 
this  tenderness  and  new    conscience    come  i      A. 


454 


RESPECT  OF  MAN. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


455 


naturalistic  writer  of  leaders  In  a  journal  to-day 
(July  15)  traces  it  to  the  French  Revolution.  It  is 
due  to  the  descent  of  the  New  Jerusalem.  The 
French  Revolution  itself  was  among  the  first  fruits 
on  the  evil  side,  of  that  descent.  After  the  last 
judgment,  the  Lord  opened  His  hand,  and  gave  new 
liberty  to  mankind.  With  mighty  emancipations  He 
gave  it  to  all.  Evil  put  in  its  claim  for  its  share,  and 
burst  its  bounds  in  taking  it.  But  this  evil,  these 
hells  opened  in  man,  and  communicating  with  their 
abysses,  gave  no  self-respect  to  the  people,  but  infla- 
tion of  wickedness,  and  assuredly  no  mutual  respect 
of  man  for  man.  Massacre,  fusillade,  and  guillotine 
were  the  outcome,  not  rights  of  individuals.  De- 
struction all  over  the  civilized  world  was  the  growth 
of  the  French  Revolution.  Along  with  it,  em- 
battled silently  and  invisibly  right  over  against  it, 
was  the  new  influx  of  the  opened  heavens,  which  full 
of  redeemed  humanity,  had  humanity  to  give  away 
to  the  world  ;  but  the  revolution  itself  was  the  mere 
permitted  rulming  forth  of  the  opened  hells.  It 
took  its  watchwords,  its  liberty,  equality  and  fra- 
ternity, from  the  skies,  and  its  motives  and  deeds 
from  the  fiends.  It  has  therefore  no  correlation  but 
that  of  plenary  opposition  with  any  of  the  good  wliich 
has  slowly  and  peacefully  unfolded  since ;  and  is  to 
be  regarded  only  as  the  allowed  plea  and  grant  of 
infernal  liberty  for  a  time  on  earth.  And  all  the 
principles  that  flow  from  that  Revolution  in  France, 
and  that  still  dominate  her,  however  decorated  with 
humane  formulas,  are  volcanic  streams  from  beneath, 
spiritual  sulphur,  and  desolation  of  human  lava. 
Let  us  then  refuse  to  regard  the  French  cataclysm  as 
in  any  sense  a  probable  or  possible  origin  of  whatever 
is  truly  human  in  modern  life ;   we  must  go  upwards 


,nd  not  downwards  for  that ;  and  in  fact  go  back 
rtbe  greater  event  of  the  Last  Judgment,  to  a 
Lored  communion  with  God  and  heaven,  and  to 
he  descent  and  revelation  of  the  New  Church, 
organically  and  most  really  permeatmg  human  mmds. 
Here  note  what  science  comes  to  m  its  attempt  to 
«nlain  the  birth  of  new  infancy  and  innocence  not 
upon  the  only  plain  fact  of  good  fathers  and  pure 
mothers,  but  upon  the  hypothesis  that  the  babes  are 
Cbbles  picked  by  the  tongs  of  material  selection 
Ithe  burning  pitch-pots  of  manifest  French  hdls^ 
It  is  a  part  of  the  current  theory  of  fire  mists    the 
"  nebular  hypothesis,"  godless  mists  of  protoplasm 
producing   at  last   happy  homes,  with  love,  and 

^       ■  ^r,    +>ipir    seats        Such    monstrosities 

conscience,   on   their    seats.       oui.u 

of  atheistical  fiction  are  often  given  out  as  Daily 
News  to  the  people.     But  they  can  be  confronted ; 
because  a  true  and  exact  knowledge  of  the  causation 
of  modem  improvement,  and  also  of  modern  de- 
terioration, is  at  hand ;  and  the  adequacy  of  the 
cause  is  attested  by  the  double  events.     New  good 
comes  from  a  new  gift  of  the  Lord;  and  new  evil 
from  the  new  liberty  granted  to  wicked  men  m  com- 
munication with  the  hells.     Every  combat  of  to-day 
is  illuminated  by  these  principles ;  the  good  and 
evil  in  it  are  dissevered;  and  each  is  assigned  to  its 
respective  factor,  and  arrayed  scientifically  under  its 
proper  chief. 

cxv. 

man's  place  in  nature. 

Man's -place  in  nature  means  his  supremacy  a^  a 
spiritual  being,  and  the  heart  and  conscience  which 


456 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


give  him  royal  duties  and  priestly  functions  in  and 
over  the  external  world.  The  details  of  his  place 
are  all  these  duties  and  offices  interpreted  by  wisdom 
from  experience.  He  is  the  minister  and  interpreter 
of  nature,  because  he  is  its  tenant  under  God,  bound 
to  cultivate  and  improve  his  estate,  and  to  render 
exact  account  of  his  possession  when  he  quits  it. 
His  improvement  of  it  is  his  case  for  a  new  lease  in 
the  spiritual  world. 

"  The  earth  is  the  Lord's,  and  the  fulness  thereof." 
Let  us  see,  without  going  higher  than  nature,  what 
that  fulness  means. 

As  basement  to  all  higher  uses,  we  have  the 
mineral  kingdom,  the  great  globe  of  the  earth,  terra 
firma.  This  is  for  man  to  stand  erect  upon,  and  be 
a  man  in  the  first  faith  that  life  is  solid,  and  has  to 
deal  all  through  with  enduring  realities.  Inevitable 
respect  for  nature  is  the  fruit.  On  this  material 
basis  the  arts  of  life  are  founded,  and  deal  with  its 
substances,  and  endure  because  of  them.  So  houses 
are  not  shadows,  but  men  may  make  them  into  last- 
ing homes. 

The  vegetable  kingdom  by  divine  impregnation 
for  use'  sake  bom  of  the  mineral,  and  representing 
it  piece  for  piece  so  far  as  it  is  evolved,  furnishes  the 
first  wild  ground,  and  softens  its  features;  makes 
the  mineral  into  tender  soil ;  carries  up  the  earth 
into  the  air,  and  produces  climates  adequate  to 
earthbom  creatures;  modifies  the  sweeping  opera- 
tions of  nature,  winds  and  rains,  and  makes  them 
safe  and  gentle  ;  gives  shelter  to  life  ;  beauty  instead 
of  baldness  to  the  land;  and  fruits  for  bodily 
sustenance.  It  inculcates  the  freshness  of  delight  as 
an  end  in  nature,  and  is  the  appointed  curtain  and 
wonder-scenery   of    all  romances    from    childhood 


MANS  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


457 


nwards      Gardens,  fields   and  woods,   and   grand 
r^Isand  the  general  green  earth,  with  mom.tam 
IdnTss  here  and  thefe,  are  a  part  of  the  natural 
"tness  "  belonging  to  the  Lord,  mentioned  by  the 
P  !  mTst      Any  great  volcanic  eruption  which  lays 
r^ttcts  -d!r  ashes,  as  in  poor  Iceland,  or  any 
Sation  which  washes  away  soil  and  inhabitants, 
r„d  rives  its  way  to  the  stony  beds  underneath 
eating  bareness,  is  an   emptying  of  nature,   and 
mirs  out  her  oil  and  wine  on  the  ground. 
P^  animal  kingdom  in  the  sea  and  on  the  land  is 
the  third  part   of  the   same  fulness.     To   taith   a 
„rcessary  part ;  for  there  seems  to  be  no  element  of 
ZZl  or  th;  water,  and  no  growth  of  any  c hmate 
%.  does  not  sustain  all  pos^ble  pop-lation  « 
appropriate   living   creatures.      They   are   the  first 
Sis  of  the  planet,  and  hold  their  lives  by  stnc 
correspondence  with  their  places  and  countries.    The 
whale  in  the  sea,  and  the  sparrow  on  the  ho-etoP 
answer  to  their  elements  and  homes.     They  were 
bom  there,  and  they  breed  and  bequeath  as  of  rigM. 
Take  them  away,  kill  the  little  birds  and  eat  them 
as  they  do  in  France,  destroy  the  whale  or  the  seal 
unduly,  and  the  fulness  of  the  earth  is  destroyed  by 
the  loss  of  natural  religion  in  man. 

The  supreme  kingdom  of  nature  is  mankind 
supreme,  because  man  is  designed  to  be  a  spiritual 
being  in  nature.  To  him  it  is  given,  where  he  is 
wise!  to  fill  and  to  guard  all  the  lower  fulness.  He 
has  to  bring  faith  and  love,  and  by  degrees  light,  to 
bear  upon  his  mission.  At  first  he  ignorant  y  cuts 
down  forests  because  they  are  of  no  account ;  and 
thus  exposes  the  land  to  floods  and  swamps,  or 
diverts  the  clouds  which  love  trees,  diminishes  rain 
and  begins  the  formation  of  deserts.     When  he 


458 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


MANS  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


459 


learns  by  the  consequences  what  he  has  been  doino* 
and  takes  to  replanting,  he  is  still  so  foolish  with  the 
amusements  of  the  moment,  that  he  goes  on  repeat- 
ing with  the  animal  fulness,  the  destructive  process 
which  has  marred  the  vegetable.  For  he  does  not 
believe  that  the  animals  of  nature,  excepting  where 
they  can  be  fleeced,  skinned  and  eaten,  or  bestridden, 
are  of  any  practical  account. 

But  are  they  then  of  no  value  in  the  construction 
of  the  world,  and  the  plenum  of  things.  It  is  a 
difficult  subject,  because  it  is  a  case  of  influx  and  in- 
fluence, and  not  mainly  of  modification  of  soil,  of 
carpeting,  shelter  and  sustenance  of  superior  tribes. 
But  analogy,  which  is  nature's  path  of  positions,  her 
organic  ratiocination,  proclaims  that  what  the  mineral 
plane  does  most  grossly,  and  the  vegetable  plane 
finely,  yet  visibly,  animal  lives  must  also  do,  if 
invisibly,  towards  the  working  fulness  of  the  earth. 
For,  where  not  interfered  with,  they  are  co-extensive 
with  both  the  other  planes.  They  are  superposed 
batteries  in  that  pile  of  which  man  is  the  summit. 
In  the  flesh-eating  ages  mankind  rests  upon  them,  as 
they  rest  upon  the  vegetable,  and  as  the  vegetable 
reposes  upon  the  ground.  Is  it  then  rational  to 
suppose  that  the  native  animals  of  any  given  country, 
are  not  centres  of  specific  influence,  which  feeds 
itself  upon  the  two  lower  kingdoms,  and  then 
radiates  back  through  climates,  and  gives  them  a 
quality  of  its  own,  without  which  fulness  would 
be  lost  ? 

Every  feeling  of  childhood  goes  with  this  de- 
duction; all  the  delight  simple  people  feel  in 
witnessing  the  ways  of  animals;  our  human  love  oi 
animals  proclaims  it;  a  nature  without  bird,  beast, 
fish  and  insect  would  be  void;  the  woods  would  be 


empty  houses;  and  the  gardens  be  sad  without  birds 
and  butterflies.  These  are  strong  mstmcts.  ihe 
passion  of  the  hunter  testifies  to  an  active  search  tor 
creatures  which  must  be  had  to  complete  his  want, 
be  they  dead  or  alive.  In  brief,  man's  mmd,  for 
good  or  for  evil,  cannot  do  without  animals. 

As  we  have  observed,  the  scale  in  them  ascends 
beyond  the  visible  sphere:  we  cannot  see  their  in- 
fluence.    But  so  time  was,  and  not  long  ago,  when 
electricity,  magnetism,  and  other  influxes,  were  un- 
recoo-nized,  though  plain  now;  we  know  that  we  are 
in  an  organized  ocean  of  them  that  we  cannot  perceive 
with  the  senses.      And  so  time  may  come,  when 
animal  influxes  into  nature,  and  what  their  currents 
of  life  do,  may  be  brought  within  just  scientific  ken. 
In  the  meantime  that  they  are  sympathetic  cor- 
respondential  centres  in  the  organization  of  things, 
is  a  dutiful  belief.     And  if  it  had  no  justification 
beyond    producing    the    child,    universal    rational 
humanity  to  animals,  it  might  stand  and  wait  with 
patience  for  other  proofs. 

Two  deductions    are    allowable    here.      1.    ine 
harmless  native  animals  of  a  country  are  not  waifs 
and  strays,  but  a  solid  constituent  of  that  geography; 
and  ought  to  be  preserved  by  the  common  law  of 
mankind.     Hunt  them  to  eat  them  if  you  will;  but 
let  the  hunting  be  a  matter  of  business,  not  of  sport; 
at  the  highest,  for   a  brief  time,  a  chevalresque 
branch  of  butchering.     Slay  the  noxious  ones;  do  it 
with  a  will  and  enjoy  doing  it;  but  m  a  military 
way,  like  a  skilful  executioner;  again,  not  for  sport. 
Kill  the  idea  of  sport  in  your  mind  where  kilhng 
life  is  your  occupation.     You  will  get  conscientious 
pleasure  out  of  the  act  when  the  idea  of  use  abohshes 
that  of  sport.    But  it  should  be  done  under  national, 


460 


MAlSrS  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


MANS  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


461 


and  in  time,  under  international  sanction.  And 
this  should  be  guided  by  the  belief  that  harmless 
wild  animals  have  a  function  in  nature,  and  that  to 
extirpate  any  species  wantonly,  is  to  empty  a  climate 
of  a  specific  essence  and  radiating  power;  to  cut  a 
nerve  with  a  tract  of  organs  beneath  it;  to  break  a 
jewel  in  the  coronet  of  nature  placed  by  the  Lord 
upon  her  head. 

What  was  said  before  about  the  affections  (see  $ 
Jxxv.)  applies  here;  the  animals  are  affections  or 
arteries  of  nature,  and  should  be  kept  open  and 
flowing  for  the  maintenance  of  her  general  life. 

2.  For  the  sake  of  this  use,  many  animals  de- 
structive to  crops,  and  yet  not  deadly  enemies  to 
man,  ought  rather  to  be  limited  within  certain 
fields,  than  reckoned  as  game,  and  destroyed.  The 
elephant  and  the  hippopotamus  are  cases  in  point, 
especially  the  latter,  which  most  needs  the  plea.  His 
large  negro  unwieldiness  pleads  pitifully  against  the 
bullets  of  the  English  sportsman;  that  form  must 
have  been  created  for  something  better  than  to  be 
shot;  and  there  is  lake  and  swamp  enough  for  his 
occupation  without  his  trenching  on  the  ground  of 
the  planter.  The  practical  point  is,  never  to  destroy 
such  a  creature  without  a  necessity  of  preservation 
of  crops,  or  of  boat  bottoms;  never  to  make  travels 
amusing  by  careless  murders  of  these  aborigines.  A 
new  conscience,  happily  arising  everywhere,  begins  to 
seize  this  point,  to  forbid  the  deed,  and  ban  its  books. 

Moreover  it  must  not  be  taken  for  granted  that 
animals  now  regarded  as  wild  and  undomesticable, 
are  so  finally.  Animals  notably  answer  to  the 
ferocity,  or  the  loving-kindness  of  man.  There 
was  an  instance  of  this  in  the  gardens  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg, where  a  man  was  surrounded  by  crowds  01 


small  birds,  settling  on  him,  feeding  from  his  hands 
or  catching  his  crumbs  in  the  air.      He  did  not 
smell  of   gun,   but   of    cake.      The   human    race, 
especially  the  travelling  English  race,  smell,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  destruction;  and  any  animal  appear- 
ing   that  completes  and    beautifies  the  scene,  is 
abolished  as  a  life,  and  beomes  an  item  in  a  sports- 
man's bag.     This  must  be  taken  into  account,  and 
iudcred  as  a  whole,  in  estimating  the  domesticability 
of  Tnimal  tribes,  and  in  squaring  the  reasons  for  its 
present  narrow  limits.     The  character  of  mankind, 
worse  in  show  and  history  than  that  of  all  noxious 
and  malignant  beasts  put  together,  is  the  house 
which  animal  nature  has  been  asked  to  enter  by 
domestication.      Is  it  likely  that  the   zebra  and 
qua<Tga,  being  of  independent  and  haughty  turn, 
should  be  won  in  by  our  human  treatment  of  the 
ass«    Or  that  the  lion  should  lie  down  with  the 
lamb  when  the  lamb  is  led  through  ignominy  to 
perpetual  slaughter,  and  at  this  day  to  scientific 
violation?     Fiendhood  cannot   tame  anything,  be- 
cause it  cannot  tame  itself     But  angelhood,  which 
is  true  humanity  bom  of  the  Divine  Humanity,  has 
a  different  chance.    Through  it  the  Lord  is  His  own 
Orpheus.     It  will  approach  the  animal  heart  by  a 
secret  way,  by  a  religion  of  courage,  and  subdue 
creatures  which  at  present  are  not  evil  but  savage 
tribes.     It  will  extirpate  evil  beasts  and  insects,  and 
clear  climates  of  their  reflex  action,  by  a  skill  and 
promptness  of  its  own.    The  good  animals  will  know 
their  masters,  as  we  have  sometimes  seen  m  history 
already.     And  so  there  is  a  time  coming  m  New 
Church  landlordship,  when  the  tribes  of  nature  will 
be  under  man  to  subdue  them;  when  the  smell  ot 
violation  has  ceased  to  be  remembered  in  the  upper 


462 


MAJSrS  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


air;  and  when  the  true  animal  ''fulness"  will  be  a 
common  plane  of  joy  and  completeness  in  the  climates. 
The  converse  of  this  is  brought  out  strongly  in  the 
records  of  violational  scientism.  Animals  from  the 
top  to  the  bottom  of  the  scale  are  of  quick  percep- 
tion of  the  character  of  those  about  them;  the 
spirited  horse  knows  a  brave  horseman  presently, 
and  resents  having  a  coward  on  his  back ;  the  big 
savage  dog  feels  the  courage  of  an  unblenching  eye 
and  invading  foot,  and  capitulates  into  tameness. 
Domestic  animals  know  cruel  men,  and  shun  them. 
They  sense  the  prevailing  tone  of  societies,  and  slink 
about  in  cruel  cities.  The  sympathetic  nerves  of 
nature  are  indicated  and  shown  in  function  here. 
So  if  a  man  better  than  men,  and  braver,  comes, 
extension  of  friendship  into  the  animal  world  is 
inevitable  ;  and  as  the  man  rises  in  the  human 
image,  nothing  living  that  is  not  evil  and  malignant 
can  resist  his  advancing  function  of  rule,  and  so  far 
as  it  is  necessary,  of  domestication.  But  at  present 
the  animal  creation  feels  the  stupidity  of  the  human 
heart,  and  the  lion  will  no  more  have  man  on  his 
back  through  respect  and  loyalty,  than  Bucephalus 
will  be  a  stool  for  a  coward.  How  should  animal 
loyalty  have  been  called  forth,  when  sportsmen,  and 
such  like  carnal  outsides,  are  all  the  creatures  know 
of  God's  image?  How  should  it  appear  when 
creation,  groaning  and  travailing,  smells  \k\Qi  hand 
of  paid  violationists  and  poUutionists  representing 
the  privy  council  of  the  most  enlightened  govern- 
ment upon  earth?  While  fiendish  fingers  are  at 
work,  no  real  experiment  of  the  brotherhood  of 
animals  is  possible  to  be  thought  of ;  because  there 
is  no  godlike  but  only  a  devilish  relation  between 
men  and  the  beasts. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


463 


In  the  meantime,  in  an  evil  age,  conserve  as  much 
as  you  can  with  all  possible  conscience;  waste  no 
beasts,  great  or  small;  destroy  no  species;  have 
faith  in  the  rights  and  functions  of  harmless  life ; 
and  enact  and  embody  for  the  animal  kingdom  a 
magna  charta  of  humanity  and  religious  love  all 
over  the  planet. 

You  will  meet  these  forms  again  when  you  die, 
for  the  spiritual  world  contains  them.  Not  a  species 
but  is  known  there,  beautiful  in  the  heavens,  baleful 
in  the  hells,  and  like  our  animals  on  earth  in  the 
entrance  world  called  "the  world  of  spirits."  They 
are,  as  was  said  above,  embodiments  and  corre- 
spondences of  human  affections  and  thoughts,  good 
and  evil,  which  instantaneously  produce  them.  They 
are  organic  words  of  God,  signifying  justice  and  in- 
justice. They  gather  up  powers,  and  represent 
them,  and  distribute  them  into  lower  planes  of 
creation.  Lions  evolve  from  the  courage  of  angelic 
truth,  and  lion  landscapes  beside  lions.  Animate 
creatures  are  therefore  the  nerve  centres  and  systems 
of  a  universal  divine  influx,  radiations  of  the  all- 
sympathetic  Word ;  and  the  heavens  can  no  more  be 
without  their  forms  than  can  the  earth.  This  is 
shown  with  much  detail  in  the  writings  of  Sweden- 
borg. 

Organic  Remorses. — It  is  on  this  ground  of  cor- 
respondence that  every  man  carries  his  own  animals, 
and  his  treatment  of  them,  from  his  deathbed  into 
his  judgment ;  that  judgment  being  a  process  of 
life.  He  stocks  the  farm  of  his  immortalitv  with 
their  grateful  and  innocent,  or  their  retributive 
forms ;  and  is  gathered  round,  or  pursued,  accord- 
ingly. The  serpents  of  the  hells  are  the  sensual 
loves  of  hellish  men  externized ;  their  bites  are  the 


464 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


selfhood  in  its  life.  They  are  true  organizations, 
logical  worms  that  never  die.  It  can  also  be  de- 
monstrated to  the  psychological  mind  that  the 
devastation  caused  in  men  themselves  by  evil  deeds 
done  to  others,  follows  structural  lines  of  law.  But 
to  see  this  a  man  must  believe  in  an  immortal  soul. 
Let  the  demonstration  be  tried, — thus.  Every  man 
has  a  sensibility  whereby  he  appreciates  in  his 
degree  any  living  creature  that  comes  before  him. 
This  is  the  first  ground  of  interest,  pity,  kindness 
and  help  for  inferior  creatures.  It  is  also  the  first 
perceptive  ground  of  dislike  and  loathing  of  ugly 
and  hostile  animals.  In  each  case  it  is  a  feeler  of 
external  good  and  evil.  It  communicates  with  all 
the  rest  of  the  man  ;  and  goes  up  into  love  on  the 
one  hand,  and  down  into  just  aversion  on  the  other. 
Humane  tenderness  toward  a  good  animal  life,  and 
against  an  evil  animal  life,  is  the  sensibility  on  its 
inward  side.  All  such  sensibilities  are  a  part  of  the 
organs  of  delight  in  the  man ;  a  part  of  the  ground 
of  his  happiness.  But  he  brings  them  into  his 
torture-house,  disregards  their  bleedings,  stills  their 
voices,  and  finally  their  cries,  and  kills  them  one  by 
one.  Their  early  horrors  become  the  commonplaces 
of  his  life.  It  is  then  as  if  he  used  his  naked  heart 
or  bared  brain  to  work  with,  instead  of  his  feet  and 
fingers,  taking  opiates  of  present  excitement  to 
deaden  the  conscience  and  still  the  pain,  and  to 
delude  him  with  the  belief  that  because  he  feels 
nothing,  he  is  doing  himself  no  harm.  In  all  this 
he  associates  with  his  fellows,  perhaps  with  a  large 
professional  party,  and  the  comfort  of  community  of 
crime  further  permits  self-violation,  and  destroys 
him.  Deeper  organisms  of  pity  made  pitiless  are 
reached.     The   internal   hell  he   has   created,   and 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


465 


which  by  common  law  longs  to  extend  and  destroy 
further,  has  next  to  be  limited  from  his  remaining 
affections,  that  it  may  be  absent  as  a  rule  of  flesh 
from  his  bed  and  his  nursery.    This  is  a  physiological 
necessity,  and  a  strong  barrier  and  diaphragm  of 
manners,  what  are  called  morals,  must  be  set  up,  in 
order  that  he  may  be  a  good  father,  a  good  husband, 
and  a  good  citizen.    He  is  walled  in,  and  has  a  torture- 
room  of  one  part  of  his  affections  in  the  middle  of 
his  character.     This  he  carries  with  him  into  the 
second  life.       The  violations  in   himself  there   re- 
produce by  an  organic  memory  which  is  his  book  of 
life,   every  act  which  caused  them  ;  and  this  con- 
tinually ;  until  the  delight  of  the  evil  becomes  pain 
and  loathing,  and  the  death  of  its  faculty  ensues. 
This  is  seen  in  small  beginnings  every  day ;  destruc- 
tion of  faculties  and  potencies  by  sins  here  ;  satiety  ; 
loss   of  hope;    loathing   of  nature   and   life;    and 
idiocy,  or  fury,  for  an  end.     But  as  man  is  the  sub- 
ject, and  regeneration  alone  secures  him,  we  must 
carry  over  the  consequences  into  an  immeasurable 
development  of  self-destruction,  with  an  immortal 
life  for  its  subject.     This  follows  from  any  organic 
good  affection  deliberately  crushed  in  the  character ; 
most  of  all  when  high  and  holy  motives  are  made 
pretexts  for  the  act.     The  doom  of  such  things  not 
repented  of,  would  appear,  on  physiological  grounds, 
to  be  devastation  of  sense,  sensibility,  and  cognizance 
of  the  existence  of  others  ;  apathy  and  inaction  ;  and 
final  solitude  of  selfhood.      Man  and  beast  and  bird 
and  insect  far  away  :  ne  quidem  musca.     An   im- 
penetrable loneliness,  to  which  the  revelation  of  a  fly 
or  a  beetle  is  impossible.      The  Lord  unable  to  be 
merciful  to  the  man  except  by  permitting  his  most 
special   devastation.     This  final  state  still  tendino- 

2g  "" 


466 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


lii 


to  enlargement  when  wicked  men  on  earth  open  a 
communication  with  it,  is  the  protomorph  and  cell- 
germ  of  the  cruel  atheism  which  now  corrupts  the 
sciences. 

Speculative  the  argument  may  look;  and  be  de- 
rided by  those  whom  it  most  concerns,  but  any  wise 
statesman  may  be  appealed  to  whether  or  not  it  has 
a  practical  bearing  upon  the  question  of  humanity, 
meaning  thereby  the  just  and  godly  treatment  of  all 
life.  And  any  churchman  may  be  trusted  to  decide 
whether  these  thinofs,  in  their  breach  and  their 
observance,  do  not  fairly  submit  themselves  under 
the  words,  ''  The  earth  is  the  Lord  s,  and  the  ful- 
ness thereof." 

That  such  considerations  also  concern  the  well- 
being  and  harmony  of  the  planet  we  live  upon,  has 
been  forcing  itself  upon  the  attention  of  physical 
inquirers,  of  proprietors,  and  of  lovers  of  nature.  In 
that  remarkable  book,  The  Earth  as  modified  by 
Human  Action,  by  George  P.  Marsh,  New  York, 
1874,  the  subject  is  presented  in  great  detail  of 
facts,  and  from  the  side  of  the  order  and  use  of  the 
various  planes  of  nature  in  the  conservation  of  the 
whole.  He  deals  with  the  material  problem;  but 
his  facts  and  deductions  are  strictly  correlated  with 
the  spiritual  planes  ;  and  serve  as  a  basis  to  the 
views  presented  above  ;  of  which  indeed  his  work 
contains  many  glimpses. 

The  fact  appears  to  be,  that  materially  and 
organically,  nature  is  created  and  conserved  in  and 
by  planes  of  pressure.  It  is  a  balance  of  classes  with 
natural  class  rights  one  above  another.  The  whole 
is  given  into  the  hands  of  man,  to  superintend  this 
natural  order,  and  to  be  of  wise  spiritual  weight  at 
the  top  of  it.     This  is  a  divine  law  of  gravitation 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


467 


needful  over  the  whole  world.  History  shows, 
however,  that  the  vices  and  sensuality  of  man,  his 
greediness  and  love  of  destroying,  the  love  of  himself 
in  his  own  generation,  and  his  disregard  of  posterity, 
and  all  the  stupidity  which  comes  of  selfishness, 
have  inflicted  upon  the  earth  disasters  almost  irre- 
mediable, or  recoverable  only  by  the  combined 
regeneration  of  the  race.  And  science  evinces  that 
these  disasters  are  written  out  upon  the  face  of  the 
planet;  so  that  the  word  of  Genesis  is  true  to-day, 
''  Cursed  is  the  ground  for  thy  sake." 

The  reader  may  hardly  be  prepared  for  such  a 
conclusion;  but  it  is  verified  on  a  large  scale. 
Thus  :  the  insects  of  a  country,  say  Scandinavia, 
form  a  plane  of  destructive  life  which  preys  upon 
forest  trees,  and  also  upon  man,  beast,  birds,  and 
fishes.  Of  themselves,  they  press  upon  the  wood- 
land, and  tend  to  devastate  it.  The  birds  of  the 
country  keep  them  in  check,  being  the  ordered 
stratum  of  life  above  them.  These  birds  migrate  in 
the  winter,  and  are  killed  in  millions  in  the  South 
of  Europe.  Those  that  return  are  insuflScient  to 
hold  the  insect  world  in  due  subjection,  and  it 
revolts  and  rises  into  their  place.  Then  the  low 
minute  population  has  the  upper  hand,  and  the 
leafless  forests  die.  Their  place  is  afterwards  a 
house  of  sand,  and  the  rains  come  and  wash  away 
the  soil.  There  are  many  other  illustrations  of  this, 
showing  the  balance  of  nature  by  the  pressure  of  the 
higher  life  upon  the  increase  and  insurgency  of  the 
lower ;  showing  in  short  that  nature  is  representa- 
tively a  spiritual  hierarchy  reaching  from  the  inmost 
faculties  of  man  to  the  dust  under  his  feet. 

The  way  in  which  his  good  or  evil  extends  into 
the  world  is  this.      The  large  species  of  animals 


t? 


<^ 


468 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN   NATURE, 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


469 


and  vegetables  are  almost  individually  within  his 
grasp.  By  his  powerful  arts  he  can  kill  all  the 
whales,  walruses,  seals,  sharks,  penguins,  etc., 
etc.,  in  the  seas ;  and  he  can  cut  down  the  forests; 
and  living  for  self,  and  for  one  generation  alone, 
his  natural  tendency  is  to  use  up  the  earth  in  his 
own  lifetime.  The  consequence  comes  that  the 
lower  creatures,  no  longer  mowed  down  by  the 
higher,  usurp  their  plane  ;  and  if  this  went  on,  men 
and  insects  would  be  at  last  the  tenants  of  the 
earth  ;  and  the  middle  class,  of  non-domesticated 
animals,  would  disappear.  Thus  man,  selfishly  grasp- 
ing the  greater  dominion  committed  to  his  paternal 
care,  really  has  the  power  of  deranging  the  whole  of 
the  kingdoms  of  nature,  and  of  communizing  the 
planet,  so  that  his  own  lowest  faculties,  and  the 
lowest  forms  of  natural  life,  shall  conjointly  reign 
supreme.  It  is  a  question,  if  this  were  consum- 
mated, how  long  the  domesticated  animals  could 
survive  into  the  insect-human  reign ;  for  the  earth 
would  be  its  fungus,  pierced  and  poisoned  by  its 
stings,  and  sprouting  constantly  like  atheism  from 
below. 

The  atmosphere  supplies  an  analogue  of  these 
orders  of  nature,  and  of  the  consequences  of  vio- 
lating them.  Its  volume  presses  universally  with  a 
weight  equal  to  so  many  pounds  on  the  square  inch. 
By  this  pressure  it  seconds  attraction,  and  binds 
every  organism  to  the  dimensions  of  the  breadth  of 
its  use.  It  keeps  the  blood  in  the  heart  of  every 
living  creature.  Take  it  away  from  man  for 
instance,  and  he  would  be  a  swollen  carcase  in  a  few 
minutes ;  his  fluids  would  have  rushed  out  from 
their  centres  to  supply  the  vacuum.  Take  away 
the  pressure  of  the  air  from  nature,  and  the  escape  of 


inside  waters  and  gases  would  convulse  the  planet 
with  general  earthquakes,  and  make  it  red-hot 
externally  with  interior  collisions.  Correlated 
events  happen  though  spread  over  ages,  when  the 
higher  pressures  of  nature,  namely  of  ordained  class 
upon  the  class  beneath  it,  are  removed  whether 
partially,  or  wholly.  The  highest  ordained  pressure 
of  all  is  man's  spiritual  action,  of  conservation,  and 
management  as  God's  tenant ;  so  many  pounds  of 
wisdom  and  its  loving  statesmanship  to  the  square 
inch  all  over  the  earth.  The  rest  follows  from  this; 
for  the  animal,  vegetable  and  mineral  kingdoms,  and 
with  them  air,  water  and  electricity,  heat  and  light, 
are  sufficient  balances  already  where  they  are  not 
overthrown  :  they  only  require  to  receive  the  true 
weight  of  man  at  the  top,  and  to  be  submitted  afresh 
throughout  to  his  conscientious  endowments  and 
their  cultivating  modifications. 

It  does  seem  strano^e  at  first  that  man  with  his 
small  stature  can  thus  modify  the  great  globe,  and 
all  that  inhabits  it.  But  the  human  body  and  the 
human  mind  supply  correspondences  which  illuminate 
the  problem.  The  body  in  infancy  is  slowly  taken 
possession  of  by  the  senses,  and  the  brain  slowly 
peopled  with  thoughts  and  reasons.  And  when  the 
man  is  mature,  and  self-possessed,  it  is  only  his  head 
and  his  muscles  and  his  skin,  his  hands  and  feet, 
that  are  given- into  his  conscious  keeping.  He  can- 
not manipulate  his  heart,  lungs  or  liver,  or  his  brain, 
or  even  discern  them  except  by  accident,  or  infer- 
ence. He  cannot  think  in  them,  or  control  their 
purposes,  by  his  direct  volitions.  Yet  the  power 
of  his  influence  for  good  or  evil,  for  weal  or  woe, 
reaches  to  the  most  secret  parts  of  his  organism. 
By  his  habits  and  by  his  passions,  by  evil  meat  and 


i 


470 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


drink  alone,  to  go  no  further,  he  can  disease  and 
destroy  parts  of  which  he  is  totally  unconscious 
until  they  fall  into  pain.  By  the  work  of  his  little 
mind  he  can  destroy  his  large,  invisible,  involuntary, 
unconscious  body.  So  now  by  the  w^ork  and 
habits  of  his  societies,  which  are  the  conscious  part 
of  nature,  he  can  destroy  the  unconscious  parts, 
which  are  the  animal,  vegetable,  and  climatic 
organism  of  the  whole  planet. 

The  mind  presents  plain  analogies  of  the  same 
thing.  A  man  can  destroy  his  own  soul  though  it 
is  far  from  his  knowledge  as  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
and  the  more  he  destroys  it,  the  farther  it  is  away. 
The  conscious  part  of  the  mind  itself,  that  is  to  say, 
of  the  organic  substantial  inner  man,  is  like  a  per- 
petual moving  point  of  thought  and  will  in  which 
reflection  scarcely  apprehends  size,  and  the  uncon- 
scious, unrevealed  part  is  comparatively  immeasur- 
able in  endurance  and  capacity;  and  yet  momen- 
taneous  good  or  evil  actions  modify  and  ultimately 
give  their  own  shape  to  the  whole.  They  deter- 
mine that  vast  world  of  the  future,  the  inner  man. 
If  the  highest  reasons,  that  is  to  say,  if  religion, 
press  upon  the  middle  plane,  and  both  upon  the 
lower  plane;  if  the  planes  are  in  order,  the  man 
governs  in  faculties  far  beyond  his  ken,  and  he  is  made 
ruler  over  many  things  to  which  his  natural  mind 
does  not  reach.  His  good  affections,  his  domesti- 
cated animals,  flourish  and  increase,  and  his  wild 
affections  know  his  predominance,  and  come  to  him 
to  receive  his  name,  to  be  his  subjects,  and  to  live 
on  his  properties.  If  the  lower  reasons  prevail,  all 
the  planes  of  his  mind  are  gradually  destroyed,  ex- 
cepting the  lowest;  and  the  small  sensual  having  no 
consciousness  of  the  vast  spiritual,  yet  has  extin- 


471 


guished  it.  Just  so  the  destruction  of  the  ends  and 
loops  of  nature  which  man  holds  in  his  hands,  really 
involves  the  desolation  of  the  surfaces  of  the  earth. 
Thus  nature  too,  like  the  body,  and  like  the  soul,  is 
worked  by  blessed,  or  by  direful  correspondences. 

Let  it  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  there  is 
danger  now  of  the  ultimate  ruin  of  the  earth  by  the 
misdeeds  of  mankind.     For  since  the  Last  tfudg- 
ment  that   danger   is    overpast,    because   man    has 
received  a  new  career  from  the  gift  of  his  Redeemer, 
who  now  holds  the  balance  of  the  natural  world. 
But  what  has  been  done  of  ruin  and  destruction  up 
to  this  time,  is  a  physical  proof  of  the  necessity  of  a 
divine  intervention  to  take  the  old  curse  from  the 
faces  of  the  ground.     Accordingly,  a  new  national 
and  international  conscience  is  born;  a  new  religious 
love  of  nature,  a  new  respect  for  her  order  and 
forms;  responsibility  to  posterity  in  the  estates  of 
the  sea  and  the  land;  and  humane  statesmanship  of 
the   public  petitioning  hard  parliament  to  be  em- 
bodied into  laws.     And  on  the  other  hand,  greed 
and  cruelty  are  stricken  and  hiding  themselves,  and 
the  first  of  these  lusts  is  forced  into  the  pleas  of 
false  freedom,   and  the  second  into  the  more  pro- 
fane '^rights"  of  false  and  evil  science.     It  may  then 
be  predicted  that  the  earth  which  is  the  Lord's,  and 
the  fulness  thereof,  will  henceforth  be   cleared  of 
these  adversaries,  and  in  time  demonstrate  redemp- 
tion geographically  by  the  superposition  of  the  new 
Jerusalem  four-square  in  every  detail  throughout 
her  renovated  climates. 

It  comes  into  view  here,  that  science  will  one  day 
help  to  confirm  the  text  of  Genesis,  "God  saw  all 
that  He  had  made,  and  behold  it  was  very  good." 
At  present  the  proof  of  this  is  not  obvious  to  man- 


) 


472 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE. 


kind.     Much  on  the  land  and  in  the  sea  is  not  very 
good ;  and  perturbation  itself  on  a  large  scale  is  an 
accepted  part  of  the  order  of  nature.     Earthquake, 
cyclone,  pestilence  and  all  kinds  of  plague  and  ruin 
have   established   cycles   in   the   course   of   things. 
And  our  laws  call  them  acts  of  God.     Yet  it  is  a 
fact  that  human  nature,  to  speak  physiologically,  is 
the  organ  which  secretes  them.     We  have  already 
seen,    on   the   natural   side,    that   man,  to  a  great 
extent,  holds  the  climates  in  his  hand;  that  his  sins, 
of  omission   and   commission,    overthrow   the  just 
planes  of  nature,  and  distort  their  rightful  pressures 
into  chaos;  that  the  lower  explodes  into  the  higher 
whenever  the  higher  is  weakened  by  human  inter- 
ference.    And  it  is  demonstrated  by  the  greatest 
effects  on  the  earth  s  surface,  that  when  the  royalty 
of  nature  goes  wrong,  her  vast  dominion  falls  into 
confusion.     For  the  lord  of  the  house  secretes  and 
determines  the  house.     If  you  consult  Marsh  above 
cited,  you  will  see  that  man,  not  God,  is  the  agent 
of   huge    catastroplies   which   are   charged    to   the 
account  of  the  Almighty.     But  when  we  turn  from 
Marsh  to  Swedenborg,  with  whom  Marsh  on  his 
own  plane  coheres,  there  is  more  to  be  said  about 
the   total    human   determination   of   nature.       For 
nature  and  the  spiritual  world  are  in  a  large  sense 
soul  and  body.     And  man,  the  end  and  purpose  of 
all  things,  occurs  over  again  in  the  spiritual  world, 
with  all  his  pressures  for  good  and  evil.     He  exists 
there    in    great    hells,    inevitably   influential    upon 
climates;    influential  by  men  here  that  correspond 
to  and  open  those  hells,  and  bring  their  influx  into 
the  world.     Such  men,  from  this  background,  secrete 
the  beginnings  of  natural  calamities  and  catastrophes, 
as  serpents  secrete  poison.     They  make  the  natural 


MANS  PL  A  CE  IN  NA  TURE.  473 

forms  and  moulds  into  which  the  ruin  runs;  and  are 
the  germs,  in  character,  of  evil  organizations,  and  of 
cosmical  destructions.  When  science  has  completed 
her  natural  survey,  of  what  visible  man  has  done  to 
telluric  nature,  which  there  is  no  gainsaying,— and  it 
accounts  for  a  large  share  of  deserts,  inundations 
and  plagues,— she  has- yet  to  turn  to  the  darker 
hemisphere,  to  show  that  act  of  God  is  unpleadable 
for  the  cosmical  catastrophes  which  appear  to  the 
sensual  mind  to  be  far  from  human  causation :  she 
has  to  show  that  here  also  man  is  the  insect  of  the 
universal  gall. 

We  now  go  further,  and  striking  the  centre  de- 
clare, that  theological  falses  flowing  out  of  tlie  evils 
of  the  heart,  determine  largely  the  condition  of  the 
planet;  that  the  selfhood  seizing  the  world  as  the 
property  of  single  lifetimes,  makes  desolation  of  the 
fields;  that  the  floating  of  religion  into  the  air, 
and  away  from  the  life  of  faithful  good  works, 
neglects  the  devastated  ground,  and  justifies  devas- 
tation as  the  order  of  nature;  and  that  justification 
by^  faith  alone,  or  the  world-wide  separation  of 
religion  from  business,  is  the  bed  of  the  tzetze,  the 
vaccination,  and  the  crocodile,  the  aunt  of  atheism, 
and  the  mother  of  Sahara.  This  is  according  to  the 
principles  of  physiological  life.     It  is  universal  cor- 

respondential   organization,    secretion,    and   circula- 
tion. 

It  is  also  evolution,  and  evolution  out  of  sub- 
stances from  which  reason,  experience  and  science 
show  that  there  is  everything  to  unroll.  Evolution 
from  God,  from  heart,  from  mind,  from  architectonic 
ends,  from  individuality,  from  freewill,  from  com- 
bined society,  from  empire,  from  righteousness,  and 
from  wickedness.     It  confronts  materialistic  evolu- 


i[ 


474 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


tion,  and  pours  protoplasm  into  the  abyss;  account- 
ing for  both  the  hypothesis  and  the  protoplasm.  If 
it  were  itself  hypothesis  instead  of  virtue,  it  yet  has 
all  life  and  consciousness  at  its  back,  all  rationality 
with  its  imagination;  and  must  beat  in  pieces  the 
material  enemy  reposing  upon  the  unknown.  More- 
over, this  doctrine  of  spiritual  evolution  leads 
directly  to  the  renovation  of  things  through  lives 
addicted  to  good  works;  to  justification  by  the 
shunning  of  evils  as  sins  against  the  Lord,  and  doing 
good  with  all  our  might,  acknowledging  afterwards 
that  it  is  His  might;  which  course  can  ultimately 
repair  the  waste  places,  yoke  the  winds  to  the  sea- 
worthy ships,  and  make  the  wilderness  blossom  as 
the  rose. 

The  human  mind  is  so  sunk  in  matter,  space, 
time,  property,  and  self,  that  it  ignores  its  own 
existence  as  a  causa  causans  in  the  world;  and  by 
correlation  ignores  the  influx  of  life  as  a  governing 
end  in  the  order  of  nature.  It  admits  hydrostatic 
pressure  as  a  force;  but  does  not  rise  towards  the 
perception  of  zoostatic  pressure;  still  less,  of  anthro- 
postatic  and  pneumostatic  planes  of  power.  This 
comes  of  the  historical  fact  that  ^^where  there  is 
no  vision  the  people  perish."  Vision  here  means 
spiritual  vision,  or  intellectual  vision  from  spiritual. 
Where  this  is  absent,  as  it  is  in  the  old  church  and 
the  old  anti-church,  all  but  material  nature  is  in 
little  pieces  which,  however  neatly  they  fit,  do  not 
join  or  communicate  with  each  other;  and  science 
plays  with  them  as  children  with  a  puzzle.  No 
influence  of  the  higher  upon  the  lower  is  known;  no 
influx  of  the  higher  into  the  lower.  There  is  no 
solidarity,  no  organization  of  things.  It  is  not 
known    that    all    men    are    created   to   form    one 


MANS  PLA CE  IN  NA TURE.  475 

humanity,  one  greatest  man  which  is  the  race  in 
the  heavens.     That  this  is  human  because  God  the 
creator  is  a  Divine  Man.     That  man  comes  of  Man 
from    the    beginning,   and   that   the   Divine   Man 
has  appeared  in  birth  and  history,  to  attest  His  own 
order,  to  establish  it  for  ever,  and  to  claim  His  own 
people.     That  His  pressure  descends  through  His 
ends,  which  are  men  and  women,  and  constitutes  all 
planes  and  pressures  from  above  downwards;  and 
that  theostatic  pressure  is  the  creation  and  redemp- 
tion of  all  things.     That  this  descends  from  man 
mto  planes  of  animals,  domesticated  and  domestic- 
able; and  constitutes  zoostatics,  which  can  be  seen 
spiritually  as  a  science,  and  loved  as  one  of  the 
humanities.     That  being  creative,  not  imitative,  it 
rejects  the  part  of  apishness  to  the  circumferences, 
and  builds  no  stone  of  its  temples  out  of  mockery. 
That   lower   down   it    constitutes    correspondential 
phytostatics,  or  pressure  of  vegetable  life,  grasping 
matter  close  with  prolonged  human  fingers  in  the 
trees,  and   forbanning   materialism   from  the   very 
stones.     That  from  gravitation,  or  mineral  pressure, 
as  the  last  tube  of  the  Archimedean  screw,  it  pours 
nature  upwards  again,  through  the  same  series  of 
now  ascending  forms,  to  the  Divine  Human  vein 
and  heart  in  the  heavens.    This  can  be  seen  only  by 
that  vision  without  which  the  people  perish.     It  has 
been  given  for  the  first  time  through  opening  of  the 
spiritual  senses  in  the  case  of  Swedenborg.     And 
with  the  vision  is  again  a  practical  purpose   and 
command   to   replenish   the   earth   and   to   subdue 
it.      And  with  the  command  is   a   steady  fire   of 
a  new  will  to   carry   on   untired  the   purposes  of 
the  daily  work,  great  and  small,  from  age  to  age. 
And  from  and  with  this  fire,  ardent,  gentle   and 


476 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


humane,  there  is  a  new  intellect  and  illuminated 
reason  in  the  vision,   which   accepts   the   hope   of 
a  complete  restoration,  and  sees  glimpses  of  the  way 
to  it;  and  believes  pre-eminently  in  God's  gifts,  and 
that  skill  and  science  and  healing  come  not  from 
self  but  from  on  high.      The   vision,  like  all  the 
greater  and  influential  vision  recorded  in  history, 
and  appertaining  to  seers,  prophets  and  founders, 
nay,  like  the  sight  of  Him  who  was  not  commanded 
by  the  Father,  but  came  down  from  the  Father, 
and  is  the  Father,  has  its  own  enthusiasm;  but  this 
is  clear  and  rationated,  not  fitful  and  expiring;  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  human  firmament,  kindling  eyes  at 
its  stars,  and  pressing  on  steadily  in  regenerating 
mmds  with  a  divine  gravitation.     It  presses  that 
nothing  is  impossible  with  God,  and  nothing  is  im- 
possible with  man  when  God  is  with  him.     Where- 
ever  good  works  stop,  (call  them  miracles  if  you 
like,)  it  is  that  God,  though  omnipresent,  is  not  con- 
joined with  the  man  who  seeks  to  do  the  works;  the 
selfhood  is  between  the  source  and  the  stream. 

One  difficulty  of  seeing  these  things,  and  of 
accepting  the  vision  that  can  see  them,  lies  in 
wrong  conceptions  of  nature,  which,  coming  from 
the  heart,  reign  in  the  lower  or  scientific  mind.  It 
is  conceived  that  nature  is  a  congeries  of  absolute 
atoms  which  have  existed  from  eternity,  and  which 
are  impregnable  beings.  They  have  no  doors  above, 
but  are  resi stent  to  the  idea  of  God.  They  open 
from  below,  and  by  inward  propulsion  of  force 
arrange  themselves  into  nature  and  her  kingdoms. 
In  short,  they  are  so  many  infinitesimal  atheists  and 
selfhoods  which  work  and  theorize  themselves  into 
worlds.  They  are  atheomorphs,  because  they  are 
figments  and  imps  of  the  atheistical  selfhood,  full  of 


HANTS  PLACE  IN  NATURE,  477 

hatred  of  the  Almighty.     Yet  such  atoms  have  no 
existence  m  things,  but  only  in   minds;  physical 
science  knows  them  not;  and  can  have  no  theory  or 
hypothesis  of  any  other  atoms  than  such  as  are  the 
first  of  any  series   of  formations,   and   which   are 
limited  to  their  own  substances,  and  for  ought  that 
can  be  divined,  may  be  broken  up,  and  reveal  them- 
selves as  the  ends  of  a  more  inward  series  of  forms. 
So  far  as  atoms  exist,  they  are  prepared  bricks  of 
an   architectonic   creation.      And    their   properties 
flow   by   a  divine   influx   into   their  forms.      And 
again,  for  another  set  of  fallacies  which  blind  the 
naturalist,  he  poses  the  infinity  of  space,  the  infinity 
and  eternity  of  the  world.     As  observed  before,  this 
is  neither  physics  nor  metaphysics.      There  is  no 
such  infinity,  and  no  such  eternity.     It  is  atheism 
over  again;  human  mind  and  human  matter  voting 
their  elements  to  be  all  in  all,  and  divine.     Nature 
on  the  contrary  is  finite  and  temporal  in  all  its  parts, 
limited  and  walled  in  by  the  larger  thing  which 
contains  it,  viz.,  by  the  spiritual  world,   ''it  is  a 
round  vessel  held  in  the  Lord's  hand.     Because  of 
this,  nature  is  capable  of  receiving  force  and  trans- 
mitting it;  the  ball  and  sphere  of  it  is  resisting  and 
elastic;   it  can  receive  what  Swedenborg  calls  con- 
tremiscentice,  i.e.  sympathetic  tremulations,  and  con- 
vey them  from  end  to  end  of  its  extense.     Were 
nature  infinite,  dissolution  of  all  movement  would 
take  place  from  want  of  walls.     It  is  the  finiteness 
of  nature  in  the  whole  and  in  every  part,  the  formal 
existence,  that  constitutes  it  a  total,  and  a  series  of 
receptive  forms  according  to  which  every  life  and 
function    moves    and   flows,   propagates    and   per- 
petuates itself.      And  atheism,  without  a  God  to 
begin     from,    in    postulating    an     infinite    world. 


478 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE, 


would  miss  out  the  functional  world.  The  concep- 
tions to  which  this  gives  rise  ignore,  inter  alia,  all 
action  of  higher  upon  lower  planes. 

But  now  if  the  higher  does  open  into  the  lower 
plane,  the  effect  may  be  illustrated  and  gathered 
from  the  kingdoms.      For  example,  the  world  beino- 
a  vessel  and  a  'plenum  with  an  almighty  will  at  its 
sides,  pressure  of  lives,  plant  life,  animal  life,  human 
life,  must  act  upon  its  auras  according  to  the  altitude 
of  the  superincumbent  life ;  just  as  water  hydrosta- 
tically  and  correspondentially  acts  in  confined  tubes 
upon  volumes  of  its  own  in  every  direction ;  just  as 
the  hydraulic  press  acts.     Only  that  each  creature  is 
its  own  tube  and  its  own  reservoir  in  its  action  upon 
the   whole.     An   animal  is  therefore  a  column  of 
forceful  life,  which  is  love,  which  is  living  fire,  a 
column  opening  down  into  the  great  sphere  of  the 
world;    and   giving   it   a    pressure,     a    prodigious 
pressure,  to  which  nature  is  a  stranger  apart  from 
life.     The  mere  existence  as  well  as  the  office  of  the 
animal  life  does  this.      Great  ''  motions  of  consent  " 
sympathetic  reflex  actions  and  reactions,  ensue  from 
the  vast  columnar  structure  and  pressure  of  kingdom 
upon  kingdom,   of  man  upon  the  rest,  and  of  the 
spiritual  world  upon  the  whole.     The  lower  kingdom 
contributes  diabolostatics  to  the  round  vessel,  and 
indents  it  with  temporary  evil.     Therefore  the  world 
is  no  chaos  without  conlBnes,  but  a  tense  drum  of 
good  or  evil  music ;  and  having  incalculable  forces 
opening  down  into  it,  and  being  bound  at  the  two 
sides,  of  space  and  time,  it  has  latent  within  it  the 
throes  of  every  life,  vibrating  from  wall  to  wall. 
None  but  the  Lord's  hand  can  hold  in  such  added 
forces,  of  which  the  powers  of  dead  nature  are  the 
mere  pots  and  recipients.     As  Babbage  has  foreseen, 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE,  479 

nature  is  a  brain  and  memory  and  reo-ister  of  all 
vibrations  from  the  beginning,  which  beginning  is 
the  Divine  Love  and  Wisdom.      But  it  is  more 
than  a  register;  it  is  nervous  and  muscular  with 
life,   and  where  its  heart  is  stricken,  it  is  explosive 
as  dynamite ;  for  a  terrible  correspondence  of  con- 
science lies  in  it.     It  is  also  an  analogue  and  cor- 
relate of  freewill  throughout,  in  that  all  its  parts  are 
individual,  and  the  pressure  and  influx  of  the  whole 
is  so  far  taken  off  them,  that  they  exist  on  their  own 
centres  for  themselves  ;  and  are  themselves  against 
surrounding  forces.       Herein  lies  one  physicaUruth 
of  the   Lord's  incarnation,  in  that  by  His  victories 
over  hell  and  spiritual  death,  He  penetrated  space 
and  time  and  their  contents,  as  well  as  personality, 
and  holds  nature  to  new  limits,  which  are  those  of 
redemption,    and   which   are   filled   by   His   Word 
opened  down  into  all  things,  so  that  the  light  of 
righteousness  is  now  sevenfold,  as  the  light  of  seven 
days  ;  and   a    new   infinitude   of  love  pulses  upon 
nature  which  her  bare  creation  could  never  sustain. 
What  is  the  good  of  these  views  of  nature  ;  and 
why  are  they  better  than  materialism  ?    They  are 
good  as  the  theory  of  gravitation  is  good,  because 
they  go  with  light  through  all  things,  and  are  the 
truth   of  them.     They  are  good,  because  they  begin 
from  God  and  end  in  God.      They  are  good  because 
they  lead  to  industrious  reverence  for  the  uses  of  the 
world.     They   confine   the  selfhood  to  the  Lords 
prayer, — to  asking  only  for  its  daily  bread. 


48o 


THE  HELLS. 


CXVI. 


THE    HELLS. 

Many  gentle  persons  are  strongly  averse  to  believe 
in  evil,  its  permanence,  punishment,  and  consumma- 
tion ;  and  to  such  readers,  what  is  said  of  the  hells 
in  these  pages  will  be  especially  repugnant  because 
of  its  substantive  character.     We  would  appeal  to 
these  minds  by  some  considerations.     1.  The  senti- 
ment   that    evil    is    an    evanescent    covering   over 
good,   finds  no  justification  in   the    present  world, 
where  good  is  never  a  development  from  evil,  but  a 
conflict  with  it,  and  a  conquest  over  it.     Experience 
denies  that  evil  is  on  the  surface,  and  good  beneath 
it,  in  society.     The  good  that  arrives  comes  from 
without,  from  teaching  out  of  the  Word,  from  better 
men  and  women  pressing  by  example,  precept,  and 
punishment,  upon  those  who  are  willing  to  repent, 
and  be  reformed.     Good,  through  truth  first,  is  on 
the  surface,  and  the  evil  deeply  within.      2.  Evil 
itself,  in  men  s  minds,  has  no  intention  of  beino-  a 
shadow,  but  perpetuates  itself  by  acts  of  will,  keep- 
ing up  appearances  as  a  platform  for  its  larger  exer- 
cise.    3.  The  sentiment  that  all  but  the  ugly  surface 
is  ''very  good,"  coexists  with  the  denial  of  freewill  as 
the  centre  of  character.     Where  the  position  of  free- 
will is  not  maintained,  no  rational  truth  about  the 
future  of  mankind  can  be  discerned :  the  mind  will 
always  be  fluctuating,  and  agitated,  about  the  origin 
and  gravity  of  evil.     It  will  tend  to  fall  out  of  the 
treatment   of  cases,    and   into   sentimental    states. 
4.  Sentimentality  has  the  eflfect  of  cruelty  where 


THE  HELLS, 


481 


evil  must  be  met,  and  the  bystander  is  incapacitated 
for  stern  help  when  need  requires  it.     5.  The  palsy 
of  the  truths  of  freewill  in  the  mind  shakes  the 
human   character   to   its   centre;   and    carried    out 
would   devastate    mankind    more    than    hell    can 
devastate.      It  would   be  annihilation,  which   evil 
abominates;  execution  beyond  capital  punishment: 
for  when  a  head  is  cut  off  there  is  a  second  head 
under  it,  but  were  freewill  gone,  the  man  is  blown 
away.     6.  Without  a  universe  divinely  built  for  the 
reception  of  evil,  a  prison-house  equal  to  its  whole 
emergency,  the  confusion  of  this  temporary  state, 
the  life  on  earth,  would  be  perpetuated  above  on  a 
scale  of  inconceivable  magnitude;  all  the  deliberate 
wicked  men  who  have  ever   existed  would  be  at 
large,  and  heaven  and  its  security  be  impossible;  for 
history,  and  revelation,  show  that  these  men  are  not 
reformable.     No  breach  of  mercy  were  so  great  as 
this,  even  to  those  for  whom  the  sentimental  mercy 
is  intended.     7.  By  bonds  the  evil  are  prevented 
from  getting  worse.     8.  The  hells  in  their  kingdoms 
and  circumstances  exactly  correspond  to  the  men 
who  inhabit  them;  these  go  to  their  last  abodes  on 
the  feet  of  their  freedom;  and  their  minds  are  con- 
served by  being  shut  away  from  the  light  and  love 
of  heaven  which  would  destroy  them.      The  man 
that  will  have  no  god,  is  shut  from  the  torture  of 
divine   influx   in   a   cavern-worship   of  self,   which 
defends   his  state,  and  is   the   architecture   of  his 
falsity.     The  love  of  self,  the  love  of  the  world,  the 
love  of  sensuality,  the  love  of  dominion,  call  upon 
their  own  rocks  to  cover  them,   and  the  ordered 
rocks,  the  lies  made   of  human  granite,  do  cover 
them,  and  prevent  their  lives  from  being  constantly 
infringed  and  broken  up   by  the  truth.      This  is 

2  II 


482 


THE  HELLS. 


a  needful  perfect  separation  of  evil  from  good;  a 
divine  respect  for  freedom  in  those  who  abuse  it. 
9.  There  are  no  arbitrary  punishments ;  no  fire  and 
brimstone  without  that  is  not  first  fire  and  brimstone 
within.  The  Lord  never  punishes,  but  the  evil 
punishes  itself  by  sinking  into  its  own  correspon- 
dential  place,  and  being  confined  to  its  selfhood. 
Similarly,  the  laws  of  order  punish  no  one,  but  the 
breach  of  these  laws  enters  penalty,  and  cuts  the 
criminal.  Here  however,  in  the  case  of  the  divine 
preparedness  for  evil,  the  laws  are  organic  sub- 
stances, like  the  laws  of  nature;  so  that  you  cannot 
violate  your  heart  by  sin,  and  have  your  heart 
whole  afterwards;  for  the  heart  is  a  divine  form,  and 
when  it  is  strained  against  God,  it  loses  its  shape  and 
make.  By  continuation,  the  body  goes  with  the 
heart.  By  further  continuation,  the  lower  world, 
and  a  fitting  society,  close  in  around  the  character. 
In  this  way  the  hells  are  simply  infernal  indi- 
vidualities allowed  as  far  as  possible  to  be  com- 
plete. 10.  Whenever  earnest  desire  to  emerge 
from  the  hells  exists,  the  prayer  to  do  so  is 
granted.  Swedenborg  has  details  on  this  subject, 
and  we  appeal  to  him,  for  there  is  no  other  source 
of  the  knowledge.  By  temporary  quiescence  of 
the  life  s  love,  which  is  the  man's  ruling  character, 
he  may  be  admitted  into  heaven  although  he 
is  a  denizen  of  hell.  He  can  stay  there  so  long  as 
his  interiors  are  not  active.  But  when  they  are 
roused  into  life,  he  casts  himself  down  most  volun- 
tarily into  his  real  place.  The  reason  is,  that  the 
light  of  heaven  is  divine  truth,  and  devils  can 
understand  this  so  long  as  they  have  any  selfish 
motive  for  understanding  it ;  they  can  comprehend 
it  with  sharp  intelligence.     By  this  understanding 


THE  HELLS. 


483 


they  can  be  lifted  out  of  the  hells.     But  they  cannot 
hold  the  understanding,  because  it  conflicts   with 
their  substance.     The   divine   truth   in   heaven   is 
always  united  with  divine  good,  and  cannot  admit  of 
union   with   the   motives   of  the   selfhood.      Con- 
sequently, when  an  evil  spirit  is  surrounded  by  the 
light  of  righteousness,  it  discloses  and  convicts  him, 
it  anatomizes  him  in  the  springs  and  pulses  of  his 
life,  and  stops  at  the  fountain-head  the  thoughts  he 
is   breathing  forth ;  the  atmosphere  of  the  angelic 
society  suflfocates  him  ;  the  light  destroys  his  sense  ; 
he  writhes  with  a  torture  that  searches  him  through- 
out, and  appears  to  himself  in  the  monstrosity  of 
his  own  evil.     The  revelation  is  intolerable.      Then 
the  organic  life  of  the  spiritual  world  draws  him  to 
his  own  abode,  where  he  looks  fair  to  himself  and 
his  fellows,  and  perhaps  regards  any  traces  of  his 
experience  as  an  ugly  dream,  the  fruit  of  material 
unhealth.     Such  is  the  mercy  of  the   hells.     The 
gentle   people   who   deny    them,    would    torment 
wickedness,  which  is  not  always  active,  with  search- 
ing torments  greater  than  the  worm  that  never  dies 
and  the  fire  that  is  not  quenched. 

In  the  separations  of  society  on  earth  we  see  an 
image  of  these  things.     Crime  never  associates  long 
with  innocence  when  it  can  escape  away.     Atheism 
never  communes  with  Christianity,  but  they  mutually 
shun   each   other.     They   shun,   because   they    are 
destructive  of  each  other's  lives.     Now  if  in  this 
world  that  were  the  case  which  is  a  universal  of  the 
spiritual   world ;  if  all  thought  and  afifection  were 
sensibly  communicated  on  the  atmospheres,  so  that 
each  man  on  his  chair  were  in  inmost  blazon  to  his 
fellows,  and  their  hearts  to  each  other  were  visible 
acts  of  gesture,  and  every  plan  revealed,  aversion 


484 


THE  HELLS, 


and   separation   would   proceed   at   a    rapid    rate; 
iudo-ment   of  the   state   of  others    would    be    in- 
stantaneous ;  men  would  fall  plumb  down  m  estnna- 
tion,  and   friendly  gatherings  like  graves  give  up 
their  motives;  and  new  societies  would  be  volun- 
tarily formed  of  those  whose  lives  agree  m  honesty 
or   dishonesty,   in   community   of  kindness     or   m 
acknowledged  bonds  of  common  schemmg  which  has 
union  outside  and  hatred  within.     For  such  a  con- 
tingency the  Dean  of  Westminster  would  urge  no 
toleration,  but  instantaneous  separation ;  the  common 
peace  of  Westminster  would  prescribe   it.     ihese 
terrible  events  closely  underlie  us ;  aud  are  the  rule 
of  the  spiritual  world,  and  our  lot  when  we  die. 
And  inasmuch  as  that  world  is  now  opened  down 
into  society,  they  will  come  here  more  and  more, 
and  re-organize  society,  and  re-embody  it,  and  em- 
battle it  into  two  great  camps,  of  good  and  evil. 
External    "friendship   of  society"   will    gradually 
perish   from  this  pressure ;  new  bonds  will  alone 
give  friendship ;  and  the  conditions  of  the  heavens 
and  the  hells  be  organically,  with  increase  as  time 
passes  on,  enacted  as  laws  of  human  nature,  and  final 
states   upon   earth.     The   hells  here  however  will 
always  deny  that  they  are  hells,  as  indeed  they  do 
now,  and  declare  that  they  are  heavens.     And  the 
war   of  each   army   for   its   own  children   will   be 
incessant ;  and  attest  by  its  permanence  the  divine 
mercy  of  freedom,  and  the  everlasting  foundations  of 

the  hells. 

Before  Swedenborg  wrote,  this  problem  of  Univer- 
sahsm,  on  which  we  here  impinge,  had  not  the 
magnitude  or  gravity  which  belongs  to  it  now.  For 
in  the  first  place,  the  spiritual  hfe  as  conceived  by 
men,    was   a  small  and  vague  thing  with  neither 


THE  HELLS, 


485 


body,  parts,  or  passions  :  all  souls  with  no  extension 
could  go  into  nutshells  of  conceit ;   and  so  it  was 
that  the  gentle  mind  dealt  with  them  according  to 
its  desires,  put  them  into  little  imaginary  heavens, 
and  toyed  with  their   progress   as   a  thing   easily 
conceded  and  which  manages  itself     But  now  the 
problem  is  larger  :  a  universe  to  which  nature  is  but 
a  vanishing  and  re-appearing  point,  is  plainly  re- 
vealed;    it  is   steadfast   where   suns   and    systems 
waver;   and  self-evident  where  nature  is  obscure; 
and  it  is  peopled  by  all  the  men  and  women  and 
children  from  all  the  natural  worlds  since  space  and 
time  were  born.     Since  refers  here  to  no  time,  but 
to  precedent   divine  love  and  wisdom;   and  so   it 
may  be  said  of  the  spiritual  universe  that  before  any 
Adam  was,  it  is.     This  is  a  prodigy  of  heavenly 
kingdoms  and  of  hellish  empires;  and  kindly  fancy 
has  nothing  to  say  to  such  awful  realms.     You  may 
speculate  if  you  will  that  Germany  will  disband  her 
armies,  and  her  lion  and  lamb  lie  down  together. 
But  heaven  and  hell,  already  standing  armies  here, 
are  mao-nitudes  which  revelation,  not  humanitarian 
speculation,  can  reach. 

But  observe,  the  problem  is  only  of  the  greatness 
of  good,  and  the  greatness  of  evil,  and  their  un- 
alterable opposition. 

On  another  side  nearer  to  us  the  problem  is  im- 
mense. For  revelation  reveals  good  and  reveals 
evil  where  they  were  not  expected:  they  are  the 
only  substances  of  which  it  is  the  organon.  It  has 
revealed  them  from  the  beginning;  and  the  Bible  is 
nothing  else  than  the  divine  light  shining  on  them 
and  at  them.  But  this  light  has  been  so  obscured, 
that  its  judgments  on  the  acts  of  life,  and  on  the 
thoughts  and  desires  of  every  hour  in  every  man, 


486 


THE  HELLS, 


have  been  made  to  mean  judgment  of  creeds,  and  to 
import  salvation  by  creeds  in  an  unknown  future 
state.     Hence   good   and   evil   have   fallen    out   of 
churches,  and  pursued  their  way  in  the  kindness,  or 
cunning,  of  the  natural  man.     But  through  Sweden- 
borg  the  cloud  is  lifted,  and  the  divine  light  shines 
down  again,  this  time  with  rational  force,  and  with 
the  sevenfoldness  of  the  Divine  Humanity,  upon 
human  character  as  its  special  mission.     And  the 
consequence  is  that  the  motives  of  men,  left  out 
hitherto,  are  the  first  tops  on  which  it  impinges;  the 
ruling  love  being  the  life,  the  whole  mountain  chain 
of  the  man.     Hence  in  estimating  heaven  and  hell, 
the  regard  is  taken  away  from  a  multitude  of  godly 
church-going  figures  for  the  one,  and  a  smaller  band 
of  criminals  and  blasphemers  for  the  other;  and  is 
fixed  instead  upon  the  general  assize  of  humanity. 
We  are  all  walking  by  voluntary  steps  to  the  one  or 
the  other;    the   divine  net  which   fishes  for  men, 
catches  the  whole  race  now  on  earth  for  separation 
and  partition.     It  is  not  the  breakers  of  law  only, 
the  thieves  and  murderers  and  violaters,  who  are 
included  in  the  meshes  of  the  hells,  but  all  the 
selfish  loves  together  which  act  intelligently  here 
without  any  breach  of  the  law  of  the  land.     The 
foundation  of  things  in  the  heart  apportions  the 
future  in  the  spiritual  life.     And  therefore  the  mass 
of  evil  men  and  women  to  be  dealt  with  is  not  pro- 
portionally represented  in  the  criminal  classes,  or  in 
those  who  outlie  the  pews  of  churches,  but  com- 
prises all  to  whom  voluntarily  the  divine  order  of 
heaven  is  impossible;   all  those  whose  greeds  and 
practices  would  break  it  up;  all  who  therefore  must 
be  separated ;  and  have  a  place  provided  for  them  m 
order  that  they  may  exist.     Granting  that  such  a 


THE  HELLS, 


487 


leaven  of  evil  exists,  and  no  great  uninspired  man 
who  has  sounded  human  nature  deeply  has  done  other 
than  affirm  it,  the  provision,  the  corresponding  jail, 
must  be  immense;  and  be  less  to  be  dealt  with  by 
universalism  than  the  petty  prisons  of  this  world, 
with  which  however  it  is  totally  unable  to  cope,  but 
has  to  abandon  them  to  the  police. 

Moreover — 11.  The  hells  are  not  hells  to  those 
who  are  in  them,  just  as  evils  are  not  evils,  and 
falses  are  not  falses;  they  are  the  delights  of  evil 
permitted  and  carried  out  so  far  as  is  compatible 
with  infernal  order;  evil  living  under  its  own 
despotisms,  but  congenial  to  those  who  are  in  it,  and 
mitigated  by  unsuspected  angelic  ministrations. 
The  pains  of  hell  are  the  pressures  of  evil  against 
evil;  selfishness  restrained  by  surrounding  selfish- 
ness. But  the  revelation  of  hell  from  the  heavenly 
point  of  view,  depicts  hell  not  as  it  is  to  its  in- 
habitants. It  is  a  land  of  hard  work,  and  of  vile 
uses;  but  where  these  are  done,  no  torment  accrues 
from  them;  but  coarse  food  and  congenial  society 
are  given.  In  short  it  is  a  universal  treatment  of 
evil  under  divine  superintendence,  and  in  a  fitting 
world, — not  jail  only,  such  as  our  justice  aims  at  upon 
earth.  In  this  world  the  prison  is  in  the  midst  of 
the  orderly  population,  the  term  of  imprisonment  is 
not  truly  but  arbitrarily  apportioned,  the  treatment 
is  not  special,  reformability  is  not  ascertained,  and  a 
penal  colony  corresponding  organically  to  all  wicked- 
ness in  detail,  is  not  possible.  With  these  limita- 
tions, however,  human  justice  aims  at  the  same 
institution  for  crime  which  Swedenborg  has  ex- 
hibited as  of  final  divine  appointment  for  the 
mightier  problem  not  of  crime,  but  of  evil. 

12.   The  hells  are  also  the  theatres  of  colossal  de- 


488 


THE  HELLS, 


RE-LNCARNA  TION, 


489 


lusions,  and  their  sciences  have  the  power,  by  abuse 
of  correspondences,  in  short,   by  magical  arts,  of 
producing  appearances  of  magnificence,  and  social 
show,  and  especially  of  rendering  the  inhabitants 
seemly  to    each   other,   and  capacitating  them  for 
mutual   association.      The  appearances  can  last  so 
long  as  order  is  kept,  and  intimate  evil  does  not 
burlt  forth  and  destroy  decoration.     But  provided 
always  that  not  a  ray  of  the  light  of  heaven  enters, 
for  this  reduces  to  reality,  and  the  men  and  women 
to  monstrous  forms.     It  is  further  to  be  noted,  that 
hell  is  only  a  place  of  punishment  in  that  crime 
itself  is  punished.    Evil  is  kept,  and  crime  punished. 
No  man  is  punished  after  death  for  the  crimes  done 
on  earth;  but  the  pursuing  vengeance  of  evil  is,  that 
it  does  over  again  what  it  has  committed  once,  and 
runs  into  punishment  by  fresh  excess.      Short  of 
crime,  and  under  the  necessity  of  daily  bread,  evil 
has  its  own  freedom;  when  crime  is  committed,  in 
hell,   as    on    earth,   the   criminal    is   reduced    and 
punished.     It  does  not  seem  that  there  is  anything 
here,  that  the  most  humane  governments  do  not 
already  admit  as  the  highest  aim  of  human  justice; 
only  that  universal  evil  is  housed  in  a  compulsory 
cosmos,  not  merely  in  a  prison;  and  is  separated  from, 
and  balanced  against,  good,  by  divine  justice  and 
mercy.     And  that  stript  of  its  delusions,  the  estate 
is  lean  and  barren,  just  like  the  interior  mind  of 
wickedness  here  on  earth.     Indeed,  all  these  things 
are  true  of  infernal  states  of  mind  in  whatever  world 
the  person  is  living. 

And  now  in  whatever  direction  we  turn,  whether 
to  the  wilfulness  of  wickedness,  to  the  immensity  of 
the  spiritual  life,  to  the  multitudes  of  its  inhabitants 
on  both  hands,  or  to  the  necessity  of  separating 


them  in  order  that  heavenly  peace  may  be  on  one 
side,  and  some  quiescence  of  proprietorship  on  the 
other, — we  find  that  the  hells,  like  just  imprison- 
ment and  punishment  here,  are  foundations  without 
which  the  divine  mercy  could  not  hold  its  way. 
The  hells  however  can  and  will  be  more  subdued, 
as  heaven  becomes  stronger  and  locks  them  closer 
against  act,  and  as  they  find  less  basis  in  society 
upon  earth,  and  fewer  wicked  men  here  to  be  their 
game  and  incentive,  and  to  draw  them  forth. 


CXVII. 


RE-INCARNATION. 


A  word  may  here  be  said,  also  from  Swedenborg, 
concerning  the  universal  effort  of  the  hells  to  break 
forth,  and  to  devastate  the  life  of  man  on  earth.  This 
is  a  scriptural  position,  as  shown  in  the  phrase  that 
the  enemy  of  mankind  goes  about  like  a  roaring 
lion  seeking  whom  he  may  devour.  It  inheres  in 
the  nature  of  evil.  But  Swedenborg  has  brought 
the  fact  into  correspondence  with  common  rational 
thought.  The  men  in  the  hells  have  lost  such  a 
world  of  appearances,  and  are  so  reduced  to  their 
own  dimensions;  in  quitting  nature  and  the  natural 
body  they  have  put  off*  such  fatness  and  put  on  such 
leanness ;  in  being  separated  from  the  good  and  the 
true  they  have  lost  such  keen  incentives  to  life;  as 
atheists  they  miss  so  much  the  lust  of  their  pro- 
paganda; and  as  selfish  they  lose  such  golden  oppor- 
tunity of  preying  upon  the  innocent  and  the  simple; 
that  it  follows  of  necessity  that  they  burn  to  emerge, 
and  to  be  again  in  their  former  haunts.     Like  dens 


490 


RE-INCARNA  TION. 


RE-INCARNA  TION, 


491 


*\\ 


of  robbers  now  in  a  country  where  no  travellers  will 
come,  they  tend  by  the  gravity  of  their  lust  to  the 
former  highroads.     In  a  word,  the  nisus  of  the  hells 
is  directed  towards  the  natural  world.     The  pre- 
valent desire  may  be  summed  up  in  one  word, — 
re-incarnation.      If  their  soothsayers  prophesy  to 
them  that  in  future  states  a  time  of  happiness  will 
come,  the  end  of  prophecy  is,  re-incarnation.     The 
''  comparative  mythologies  "  of  the  abyss  must  end 
in  avatars  of  their  people  into   nature  again.     It 
stands   to   reason.      And  Scripture,  especially  the 
Apocalypse,  is  full  of  attestations  of  the  desire  of 
the  hells  to  burst  their  boundaries,  and  pour  their 
lava  of  lusts  upon  the  earth.    If  this  is  an  inevitable 
design  in  the  empire  of  evil,  it  is  represented  in  a 
false  faith ;  and  this  faith  has  come  upon  earth  in  a 
formal  doctrine  of  re-incarnation  preached  by  many 
spirits  to  men.     The  re-incarnation  has  sometimes 
come  subjectively  by   demoniacal  possession;   but 
the  more  complete  doctrine  at  present  is,  that  it  is 
effected  by  a  second  birth.      The    spiritual  world 
itself  is  virtually  denied  in  this,  save  as  a  room  for  a 
man  to  turn  fairly  round  in,  and  come  back  again  as 
a  little  child.    So  that  past  generations  of  imperfect, 
or  of  evil  men  and  women  reappear  in  the  innocent 
aliases  of  infants  in  our  nurseries.    And  up  and  down 
like  buckets  on  a  wheel  they  go  continually,  from 
sinner  to  his  spirit,  and  from  thence  to  a  new-looking 
baby;  and  then  through  a  new  lifetime;  and  another 
death  and  another  birth.     Here  the  hells  lay  hold 
on  the  form  of  innocence,  infancy,  as  their  device 
for  getting  back  to  earth.     The  doctrine  is  diabol- 
ically true,  and  that  is  all  that  need  be  said  of  it. 
The   existence  of  the   hells,  and  their  attempt  to 
ascend,  rationally  account  for  it.     A  bloody  infant 


came  up  out  of  the  witches'  cauldron  in  Macbeth ;  a 
representative  of  violated  innocence  projected  from 
infernal  lusts.  So  also  Swedenborg  mentions  an 
infernal  society  which  sent  forth  as  an  emissary  the 
apparition  of  such  an  infant.  And  as  surely  as  vice 
wears  virtue  for  a  cloak,  and  violation  puts  on 
benevolent  smiles,  so  surely  will  all  the  hells  desire 
to  wear  infancy  for  their  garb,  in  other  words,  desire 
to  be  born  again  in  their  own  way,  or  to  be  re- 
incarnated. 

In  this  sense,  no  man  has  ever  been  incarnated, 
much  less  re-incarnated  :  Incarnation  belongs  to 
the  Lord  alone.  No  man  as  a  conscious  soul  has 
ever  pre-existed  to  his  body.  His  spirit  awaits 
him  when  he  dies,  to  be  of  quality  as  his  life  has 
been:  but  it  has  not  been  spiritually  extant  above 
his  flesh  in  this  world,  and  entered  it  as  a  body,  as 
Jehovah  was  above  the  human  nature,  and  plenarily 
entered  it.  In  the  finite  man,  new  germs  of 
faculties  have  been  given  in  conception  and  birth, 
and  from  within,  on  prepared  organisms,  by  spirit- 
ual influx  meeting  the  world  of  sense,  have  been 
developed  into  a  mind  which  becomes  an  image  of 
a  spiritual  mind  forming  within ;  and  in  this  way 
a  new  special  man  is  built  up  from  above  and 
from  below,  and  traverses  a  new  career  and  iden- 
tity, and  becomes  a  new  character  determinant  of 
a  future.  When  death  takes  place,  the  scaflblding 
is  taken  from  this,  and  the  spirit  which  has  received 
form  and  capacity  from  it  becomes  the  conscious 
man  in  a  second  life.  This  spirit-man  is  a  powerful 
personality  for  good  or  for  evil,  and  his  adoption 
into  sonship  and  angelhood  by  the  Lord,  or  his 
reduction  into  the  form  of  his  own  selfhood,  are 
then   effected   as    final   states.      Especially   in  the 


^  9  2  EE-INCARNA  TION, 

latter  case,  the  characteristic  form  resists    change, 
and  cannot  be  born  again,  either  by  regeneration, 
or  by  the  mode  suggested  by  Nicodemus,  of  enter- 
ino"  again  into  the  mother  s  womb.     The  reduction 
oi   such   a  mind,  itself  the  savourless  salt  of  de- 
struction,   into    its    seeds  and  protomorphs,  would 
destroy  its  essentials,  and  its  infusion  into  natural 
seed,  were  that  possible,  would  burn  up  generation 
in  a  furnace  of  evil  fire.      Nero,  not  as  a  heredi- 
tary tendency,  but  as  a  personal  possession  in  the 
seed,  is  impossible  :    especially  since  there  is  no  part 
of  Nero  that  has  not  had  a  full  chance  of  regen- 
eration ;  no  other  side  to  Nero  which  is  not  Nero : 
for  he  has  fully  murdered  his  infancy,  and  can  be 

an  infant  no  more. 

This  doctrine,  of  re-incarnation,  has  no  support 
in  any  field  of  knowledge  ;  it  shows  no  way  of  ful- 
filment;   nor  has  any  root  but  the   desire   of  the 
worst  estate  to  possess  the  best ;    it  is  a  form  of 
infernal  lusts,  and  revolts  the  human  race  like  the 
first  rumour  of  a  bodily  invasion  from  below.     It 
is  as  false  as  it  is  evil,  teaching  that  little  children 
are  old  sinners  under  the  mask  of  childhood,  and 
that   their   angels    do  not  behold    the  face  of  the 
Lord.      This  of  its  deeper  grounds.      Among  the 
minds  here  which  are  fascinated   by  the  doctrme, 
and  connect  it  with  the  more  innocent  mythus  of 
metempsychosis,  it  is  a  baseless  imagination  if  not  a 
spiritual   disease,   and   ministers   confusion   to  the 
heart  upon  the  main  subjects  of  affection  and  hope 

for  the  future. 

The  doctrine  of  a  second  personal  appearance  ot 
the  Lord  on  earth,  derived  as  it  is  from  the  letter 
of  Scripture  not  spiritually  understood,  has  some 
relation  to  this  doctrine  of  the  re-incarnation  of  men 


RE-INCARNA  TION. 


493 


in  second  mortal  bodies.  His  second  coming  is  not 
indeed  supposed  to  take  place  by  birth  again,  but  it 
is  a  personal  natural  advent,  and  under  a  finite  form. 
The  same  impossibility  occurs  here  as  in  the  former 
case,  but  aggravated.  The  reason  why  no  man 
once  born  here  can  enter  nature  a  second  time,  is, 
that  he  is  too  large  for  nature :  flesh  and  blood  can 
hold  a  mind,  and  suffer  spiritual  influences,  but  they 
cannot  hold  a  spirit.  The  reason  why  the  Lord 
comes  by  no  second  personal  coming  is,  that  since 
His  conquest  over  all  the  hells,  and  over  all  the 
heavens,  He  is  clothed  with  the  spiritual  sun,  in 
the  midst  of  which  His  Divine  Manhood  lives, 
and  were  He  to  descend  thus,  even  were  it  but  a 
little  descent,  He  would  burn  up  creation  with  His 
ardours.  His  distance  is  the  exact  mathematics  of 
His  mercy.  His  person  is  mighty  beyond  uni- 
verses, and  can  be  seen  on  no  planet  by  the  natural 
eye.  Moreover,  He  can  come  by  the  impartation  of 
a  new  divine  truth  which  is  Himself,  and  by  which 
He  touches  all  minds ;  He  can  come,  and  has 
come,  to  the  prepared  rational  mind  of  a  man,  from 
which  His  open  and  guiding  light  will  extend, 
until  it  fills  the  world  with  its  glory.  This  is  a 
second  coming  in  divine  wisdom  from  divine  love, 
oppugnant  as  a  doctrine  to  a  second  coming  of  a 
divine  material  form  :  it  is  a  second  cominof  as  the 
teacher  of  all  things,  even  sciences ;  as  the  one 
educator  of  freemen. 


494 


THE  CONDEMNED  SERMON 


CXVIII. 


THE    CONDEMNED    SERMON. 

An  outcome  of  the  true  doctrine  of  the  hells,  sup- 
ported as  it  is  now  by  experimental  knowledge,  is  a 
new  practical  administration  of  the  church  at  the 
deathbeds  of  notorious  evil  livers.  Hitherto  the 
church  has  ministered  religious  flattery  to  the  last 
hours  of  such  people;  and  preached  peace  where 
there  is  no  peace.  For  repentance  is  impossible 
in  the  face  of  the  king  of  terrors,  and  especially 
in  full  view  of  the  executioner.  The  man-spirit,  once 
beyond  death,  and  raised  up  into  a  new  existence, 
returns  to  his  former  life  in  hours,  or  days,  as  the 
case  may  be.  Under  such  circumstances,  the  "  lay- 
ing hold  of  Christ"  by  faith  is  a  delusion,  and  the 
confidence  of  forgiveness  and  acceptance  which 
follows  it  is  an  opiate,  not  a  hope,  or  a  new  life.  But 
nevertheless  the  church  has  a  duty  to  perform  which 
at  present  is  unfulfilled.  The  church  has  to  tell  the 
truth,  and  give  it  to  the  dying  man  to  carry  with  him 
into  his  second  life.  If  he  is  reformable,  it  will  work 
there,  and  begin  his  defences  against  the  hells  which 
will  claim  him.  That  truth  is,  that  as  soon  as  his 
resurrection  is  effected,  the  impetus  of  his  past  life, 
and  the  force  of  his  acquired  character,  will  drive 
him  on  to  repeat  the  deeds  done  in  the  body;  in 
short,  to  continue  his  life;  and  that  he  must  be 
aware  and  ware  of  this,  and  act  upon  it,  if  he  would 
escape  from  his  own  hell.  That  he  can  look  to  the 
Lord  after  resistance  to  the  temptations  that  will 
assail  him,  but  not  before.    That  opportunity  will  be 


THE  CONDEMNED  SERMON 


495 


given  him  to  reform  if  he  desire  it;  but  that  oppor- 
tunity is  not  given  on  earth  any  longer;  because  the 
circumstances  now  are  of  compulsion,  and  oppor- 
tunity of  reform  is  of  freewill;  and  that  all  he  can 
do  of  religious  act  at  present  is,  to  acknowledge  his 
sin  and  the  damnation  of  it ;  not  impiously  adding 
to  it  by  endorsing  momentaneous  faith  without  life 
as  justifying  in  the  sight  of  God.  Moreover,  in  the 
case  of  criminals,  complete  confession  is  setting  the 
house  in  order;  the  restitution  that  the  heart  can 
make  to  an  outraged  society.  But  hope  founded 
upon  repentance  now  must  be  put  aside  by  the 
church  for  the  man  as  an  aggravation  of  crime  and  a 
mockery  of  penitence.  Mercy  is  nearest  when  it  is 
least  plucked  at  by  red  hands.  The  cries  of  the  lost 
reach  the  great  ear  when  the  psalms  and  hymns  of 
human  doctrine  and  confidence  are  dispersed.  In 
the  New  Church  therefore  the  deathbed  priest,  and 
the  ''  condemned  sermon,"  will  tell  the  truths  of  the 
other  life  to  the  departing  soul,  and  to  the  criminal 
about  to  die ;  the  chloroform  of  false  religions  and 
all  other  cliloroform,  will  cease  to  be  administered  in 
the  solemn  hour;  these  being  the  old  cup  of  comfort 
with  which  evil  treats  itself,  not  the  means  with 
w^hich  a  true  church  can  treat  it;  and  the  man  will  be 
invited  to  prepare  for  nakedness  before  his  God,  and 
for  final  truth  to  his  country;  and  be  taught  that  he 
will  stand  on  a  fresh  ground  soon,  and  fight  the 
battle  of  his  own  life,  and  carry  forward  the  same 
conditions  which  are  those  of  reprobation,  or  of  sal- 
vation, here.  The  last  hours  are  therefore  filled,  but 
with  new  confessions,  and  new  instructions ;  and 
where  there  is  not  avowed  impenitence,  the  church 
has  still  a  right,  in  the  light  of  her  truths,  to  bid 
Godspeed  to  the  departing  sinner. 


496 


GOOD  AND  EVIL  DO  NOT  MIX, 


For  all  practical  purposes,  we  are  going  into  a 
harder  and  sterner  world  than  the  past  has  been; 
in  the  past,  evil  has  been  hard,  and  good  has  been 
soft ;  in  the  battle  between  the  two,  these  conditions 
can  now  be  reversed;  and  while  love  and  charity 
will  have  a  new  tenderness  to  their  own  children 
and  objects,  their  great  executive  functions  will  be 
carried  forward  by  edges  of  truth  which  will  search, 
judge,  and  prevail. 


CXIX. 

GOOD   AND    EVIL   DO    NOT   MIX. 

As  dealing  here  with  a  group  of  doctrines  affecting 
the  belief  in  our  future  life,  we  cannot  avoid 
noticing  the  remarkable  thesis,  that  in  the  long 
run,  owing  to  the  fact  of  universal  redemption, 
internal  evil  or  selfishness  will  be  absorbed,  so  that 
though  permanent  and  unsubdued  in  the  will,  it  will 
work  towards  good  by  a  perfect  perception  of  policy; 
wicked  men  will  do  good  from  selfish  motives; 
and  the  perfect  gentleman  in  this  wise  associate  on 
terms  of  finished  conduct  with  the  angel  of  heaven. 
This  view  leaves  out  the  searching  light  of  divine 
truth  in  heaven,  as  first  shining  upon  motives, 
which  are  the  values  known  there.  It  destroys  the 
conception  of  heaven  as  the  reign  of  truth.  It 
ignores  the  deeper  experience  of  this  world,  where 
the  genuine  good  man  and  the  most  politic  rogue 
never  sit  for  many  years  in  the  same  assembly 
without  mutual  appreciation  and  aversion.  It 
leaves  out  completely  Swedenborg  s  unique  experi- 
ence of  the  life  after  death,  and  uses  redemption  to 


GOOD  AND  EVIL  DO  NOT  MIX,  497 

expunge  regeneration.  It  is  a  talula  rasa  of  good 
and  evil  with  no  new  players  introduced,  and  leaves 
the  world  of  practice  empty.  The  writer,  so  far  as 
he  has  understood  the  view,  is  unable  to  see  that  it 
is  any  part  of  the  secret  of  Swedenborg,  whose 
whole  open  mystery,  declared  in  his  plain  works,  is, 
that  the  way  to  heaven  lies  in  shunning  evils  as 
sins  against  the  Lord,  and  afterwards  in  doing  the 
good  work  of  the  daily  life;  which  separates  heaven 
from  hell  by  a  divine  barrier  of  principle  in  the 
man  and  in  the  race;  and  leaves  the  two  states 
antagonistic. 

The   opposite    doctrine,   that   because   men    are 
redeemed  they  are  emancipated  from  the  limits  of 
good  and  evil,  seems  to  make  spiritual  hypocrisy 
into  a  permanent  root  of  true  candour,  unconvict- 
able  by  divine  light  itself;  unless  indeed  we  admit 
in  the  supposed  case  a  latent  motive  of  good  at  the 
core,  which  destroys  the  hypothesis.     Swedenborg  s 
doctrine,   and    experience,  of   Vastations,    already 
dwelt  upon,  are  his  answer  to  the  view  that  evil  can 
keep  up  appearances  in  the  other  life,  and  run  an 
equal  friendly  race    with    good :    he    shows    that 
motives  of  self-preservation  do  not  keep  selfishness 
straight;  that  as  the  drunkard  is  not  kept  from  his 
vice  by  the  destruction  of  life,  property,  pleasure 
and  hope  that  comes  upon  him,  so  evil  men  after 
death  are  not  made  beautiful  and  obedient  by  the 
strongest  motives  to  be  so;   but  that  they  persist 
until  they  are  burnt  out,  and  can  do  no  more  evil. 
They  are  then  available  for  some  low  uses,  and  to 
the  measure  of  these  they  are  still   men,  because 
freewill,  the  everlasting  chooser  of  good  and  evil, 
still    subsists.      This    is    a    simple    statement    of 
Swedenborg's  doctrine,  and  it  is  only  by  brushing 


498      THE  ANNIHILATION-THEORY  OF  EVIL, 

aside  as  of  no  importance,  or  as  of  ephemeral  truth,  all 
his  statement  of  the  spiritual  world,  that  the  other 
view  comes  to  hearing. 


cxx. 


THE    ANNIHILATION-THEORY    OF    EVIL. 


Yet  one  other  guess  claims  the  theological  ear,  and 
like  the  last  it  is  not  an  experimental  doctrine,  but 
is  founded  upon  a  reverent  interpretation  of  the 
letter  of  Scripture,  and  particularly  upon  the  phrase, 
the  second  death,  as  pertaining  to  the  wicked. 
This  guess  is  that  the  wicked  actually  die  out,  evil 
having  thus  no  true  existence.  It  is  humanely 
meant,  but  after  all  it  is  terrible,  a  kind  of  divine 
suicide.  For  it  forgets  the  true  ground  of  immor- 
tality, which  is  freewill,  and  can  give  little  reason 
for  a  man's  enduring  life  that  does  not  apply  also  to 
animals.  The  reason  of  hell  is  the  immortality  of 
hell :  that  reason  is  that  men  freely  will  hell.  No 
man  is  there  without  intensely  willing  it.  He  does 
not  wish  limitation  and  pain,  but  he  does  will 
and  delight  in  evil.  That  always  means  that  he 
can  come  out  of  hell,  but  will  not.  And  that  means 
that  the  Lord  is  present  in  his  inmost,  keeping  up 
his  freewill,  and  therefore  his  life.  And  in  the 
dregs  and  ashes  of  himself,  that  divine  presence 
sustains  him  in  being.  If  he  is  a  suicide  in  heart, 
his  will  to  suicide  is  supreme;  and  this  means  that 
he  is  potently  alive  to  killing  a  present  state,  but 
by  no  inclusion  that  he  climbs  behind  his  living 
freewill,  and  has  any  desire  to  kill  himself.  His 
freewill  feels  its  invulnerable  life  when  he  strikes  his 


DIVINE  INFLUX. 


499 


heart,  and  destroys  the  fleshy  vesture  of  the  day. 
Now  the  doctrine  we  are  considering  lets  freewill 
slip  out  of  its  basket,  as  it  is  very  apt  to  slip  from 
theological  minds,  and  losing  the  ground  of  immor- 
tality, it  seeks  to  enact  mercy  by  proclaiming  the 
cessation  of  that  which  cannot  cease.  The  doctrine 
of  Vastation  occurs  again  here :  evil  reduced  finally 
to  its  least  compass  and  smallest  powers  of  aggres- 
sion :  oblivion  of  faculties  destroyed  by  misuse; 
regret  and  remorse  gone;  capacity  of  suffering 
greatly  extinct;  but  freewill  left;  as  it  were  a 
second  childhood  of  evil  of  which  we  know  nothing 
but  by  hints,  excepting  that  it  does  not  outlie  the 
providence  of  the  Lord. 


CXXI. 


DIVINE    INFLUX. 

Because   the   theological    ages    are    commencing 
upon  earth,  and  will  take  possession  of  the  mind,  and 
supersede  the  reign  of  scholastic  dogmas  which   has 
preceded,  many  substantial  subjects  connected  with 
divinity  are  appearing  upon  the  field  of  thought, 
and  must  exercise  faculty  to  follow  and  understand 
them.     The  subject  of  Influx  is  one  of  these,  and 
of  great  importance,    because   it   reaches    upwards 
into   the  religious  life   where  the    Holy  Spirit    is 
the  giver  ;    into  all  faith  in  God  the  Creator  as  the 
conserver  of  the   universe  by  His  perpetual  active 
presence  as  Re-creator  ;  and  into  the  Word  made 
flesh  as  the  light  and  life  of  men,  and  the  Sun  of 
the   new  dispensation  :    and  furthermore,  the  doc- 
trine of  Influx  reaches  down  into  the  sciences  of  the 


500 


DIVINE  INFLUX, 


natural  world,  where  influx  from  above  is  the  vital 
principle  in  all  living  subjects;  the  propagative  effort 
in  all  growth;  and  cohesion,  property  and  pressure  in 
the  mineral  and  planetary  worlds ;  acting  through 
universal  atmospheres  which  engird  and  consociate 
the  whole. 

The  heads  of  the  subject  are  plain ;  and,  so  to 
speak,  matters  of  dutiful  belief;  that  God  is  present 
by  His  Spirit  universally;  is  the  end  of  ends,  and 
the  cause  of  causes ;  and  by  real  efflux  makes  all 
things  not  from  nothing  but  from  Himself;  and 
by  real  influx  into  the  things  made,  sustains  and 
moves  them.  This  is  enough  for  simple  faith. 
But  more  can  be  known  now;  and  intelligent  study, 
guided  by  the  doctrinal  light  sent  through  Sweden- 
borg,  will  educate  the  mind  dwelling  upon  these 
and  similar  high  subjects. 

The  influx  of  life  into  the  human  form  takes 
place  through  planes  of  discrete  degrees  ;  through 
steps  of  structure  severed  from  each  other  in  form, 
function,  and  nomenclature.  Beofinninor  at  the  con- 
scious  end,  love, — which  is  the  life  of  the  man,  of 
which  will  is  the  determination,  and  freewill  the 
point  of  personality, — receives  in  that  central  heart  of 
freedom  the  influx  from  God,  which  is  the  life  of  its 
life.  This  is  the  first  structural  plane  of  conscious- 
ness superposed  upon  all  the  rest.  The  next  plane 
is  wisdom  ;  the  shape  and  form  and  make  of  love, 
and  the  substantial  proposition  of  its  ends.  It  is  a 
heavenly  form,  but  love  is  all  in  all  in  it,  consubstan- 
tial  and  constructural  with  it,  or  it  would  not  be 
wise  for  that  love.  The  next  plane,  the  next 
organism,  is  intelligence,  and  reason  is  to  intelli- 
gence as  freewill  is  to  love,  a  balance  in  its  midst, 
where  it  weighs  its  perceptions   in   the   scales   of 


DIVINE  INFLUX, 


501 


perceived  truth.     In  this  intellect,  wisdom  must  be 
all  in  all,  or  it  will  not  be  intelligent  and  provisional 
for  the  true   ends   in   view.      The  fourth  plane  is 
science,  where  love,  wisdom,  and  intelligent  reason, 
enter  the  body  of  things  and  affairs,   and  by  know- 
ledge govern  them,  not  for  the  moment,  but  for  the 
behoof  of  the  man.     All  the  former  planes  must 
co-exist  and  be  all  in  all  in  science,   or  it  is  science 
for  no  human  purpose,  and  ransacks  the  world  for 
temporary  ends  with  a  wandering  eye.     The  human 
body  repeats  in  similar  degrees  the  conscious  degrees 
of  the  mind.     The  brain   and  nervous  system  are 
the  ends,   the   heart  and  bloodvessels  and  viscera 
are  the  means,  and  the  whole  muscular  and  com- 
pacted frame  is  the  result ;  three  planes  containing 
many  sub-planes  ;  and  in  which  the  law  is  creative; 
and  the  higher  plane  all  in  all  in  the  second;  and 
with  the  second,  all  in  all  in  the  third. 

As  Swedenborg  says,  these  planes,   especially  in 
the  mind  and  the  spirit,  do  not  communicate  by  con- 
tinuity,  but  by  correspondences.     That  is  to  say, 
the  organic  plane  called  love,  does  not  so  flow  into  its 
form,  wisdom,  as  to  bare  and  uncover  itself  there, 
and  enact  a  tesselation  and  dovetailing  with  wisdom 
as  with  an  equal  substance  and  an  equal  fibre ;  but 
by  a  new  form  superinduced,  it  clothes  itself,  and  so 
clothed,  is  wisdom.     And  so  wisdom  never  bares 
itself    in  the  fabric  of    intelligence;    but   wisdom 
evolves  intelligence  as  another  new  form,  and  puts 
it  on  as  its  organ  of  exterior  scope.     The  like  holds 
of  the  other  planes;   they  are  severed  from  each 
other  by  difference   of  determination,    and  cannot 
look  back  to  see  unclothed  the  plane  above  which  is 
their  soul,  and  their  all  in  all.      And  so  also  the 
case  is  with  the  spiritual  and  the  natural  worlds. 


502 


DIVINE  INFLUX, 


The  natural  world  is  the  efflux  and  clothing  of  the 
spiritual ;  the  spiritual  world  is  the  only  body- 
within  the  vestments  of  time  and  space ;  but  none 
of  that  body  here  is  bare  of  the  vestments  ;  they 
are  discreted  or  severed  from  it  by  being  vestments 
not  substances  ;  they  are  not  continuous  with  it  by 
any  perception,  or  otherwise  than  by  that  produc- 
tiveness or  influx  by  which  the  spiritual  realm  is  all 
in  all. 

This  argument  is  undertaken  to  illustrate  what 
Swedenborg  says,  that  the  lower  planes  communi- 
cate with  the  higher,  not  by  continuity,  but  by 
correspondence,  and  to  put  aside  one  fallacy  which 
may  possibly  have  a  place  in  many  minds.  The 
phrase,  '^  communication  by  correspondence,"  may 
perhaps  be  taken  to  mean,  that  the  effect  of  the 
higher  upon  the  lower  realm  is  brought  about  by  a 
kind  of  spark,  and  that  the  nexus  implied  is  a  thin 
stream  :  also  that  the  lower  is  separated  from  the 
higher  as  the  successive  plates  of  a  battery  may 
be  separated.  The  author  has  laboured  under 
these  difficulties  himself,  and  would  fain  see  beyond 
them,  and  help  other  minds.  One  key  to  the 
subject  appears  to  lie,  in  holding  to  the  principle, 
that  the  higher  plane  is  all  in  all  in  the  lower;  not 
distant  from  it,  but  its  very  substance;  yet  dis- 
creted from  it  in  office  and  function  in  order  that 
the  lower  plane  may  have  its  own  existence  and  uses. 
Intellectually  this  presents  thought  in  every  case 
with  a  new  sphere,  and  sensually  the  image  is  pro- 
duced in  the  mind  of  successive  planes  or  firmaments 
of  substance  and  power.  Yet  the  sensual  image 
must  not  be  fixed  as  a  truth,  but  be  entered  by  the 
acknowledgment  that  the  higher  plane  is  present 
in   its  breadth  through  the  whole  complex  of  the 


DIVINE  INFLUX. 


503 


lower.  The  absence  of  continuity  is  therefore  not 
produced  by  a  chasm  between  the  two,  nor  the 
influx  by  any  mere  spark  or  flash;  but  a  new  point 
of  departure,  and  a  newness  of  result,  from  the 
origination  of  new  form,  is  that  which  constitutes 
the  gulf ;  and  the  influx  is  as  broad  and  solid  as  the 
being  which  is  its  subject. 

Therefore  influx  is  the  whole  organism  in  fluxion, 
and  such  parts  of  it  as  can  be  imparted,  coming 
down  into  the  terms  and  limits  of  the  next  lower 
plane  through  appointed  channels  of  service.  For 
this  end,  there  must  also  in  every  case  be  not  only 
channels  through  which  the  substance  flows,  but 
also  a  point  and  chamber  where  that  substance 
changes  its  form,  and  takes  on  the  lineaments  of  the 
new  sphere  or  service  into  which  it  enters.  Herein 
lies  the  break  of  continuity:  the  new  presence  is 
now  clothed  with  another  body,  ix,  form,  has  put 
on  other  eyes,  and  cannot  look  back  to  the  realm 
out  of  which  it  has  been  born.  It  is  so  to  speak 
incarnated  away  from  it.  And  the  intellectual 
mind  following  the  descent,  cannot  look  back  to 
the  parent  plane  above ;  for  the  stream  of  influx 
cannot  be  inverted,  and  no  study  can  traverse 
any  lines  of  inversion  to  meet  it,  or  otherwise  than 
to  miss  it. 

Thinking  out  the  subject  further,  the  break  of 
continuity  does  not  imply  that  there  is  not  a  real 
stream  from  the  higher  to  the  lower  plane  or  organ- 
ism, for  this  were  to  deny  the  influx;  but  does  imply 
that  the  stream  has  a  new  name  from  a  new  form 
and  function  and  sphere,  and  at  the  threshold  of  this 
has  lost  its  old  attributes.  The  new  attributes  are 
to  the  new  sphere  what  the  former  attributes  were, 
and  still  are,  to  the  sphere  above  it.     In  this,  the 


504 


DIVINE  INFLUX. 


two  spheres  are  equated ;  and  in  this  equation,  they 
correspond.  We  may  again  recur  to  the  examples 
of  divine  fire  or  love,  and  natural  fire  or  heat.  The 
one  at  its  limit  passes  into  the  other,  loses  the 
spiritual,  and  takes  on  the  natural  form;  but  were 
the  upper  current,  of  the  divine  love,  subtracted,  the 
heat  of  nature  would  be  no  longer  supplied.  Coming 
then  to  the  upper  limit  of  nature,  to  her  first  formal 
recipiency,  the  jlammantia  mcenia  mundiy  the  love- 
fire  still  rolls  on,  unobstructed,  and  is  converted  and 
gathered  into  the  solar  heats. 

These  remarks  are  made,  to  assert  the  reality  of 
influx,  its  breadth,  and  substantiality,  and  thus  to 
rescue  and  separate  the  idea  of  correspondency  from 
the  Leibnitzian  imamnation  of  Pre-established 
Harmony,  according  to  which  the  several  planes  are 
puppets  moving  consentaneously  on  the  string  of  a 
common  law:  whereas  they  are  analogous  to  person- 
alities one  within  the  other,  and  serving  each  other 
independently  in  different  spheres,  but  all  taking  life 
and  substance  from  the  first,  and  gradually  convert- 
ible to  it.  We  therefore  see  that  the  nexus  between 
God  and  the  soul  is  of  the  whole  breadth  and  being 
of  the  soul;  a  word  of  organic  substance;  and  that 
God  is  infinitely  more  than  can  be  imparted :  that 
the  soul  is  actively  connected  with  the  body  by  its 
whole  breadth  and  being;  and  also  is  indefinitely 
broader  than  this  connexion;  and  that  the  spirit  is 
likewise  thus  in  its  connexion  with  the  conscious 
mind.  That  the  higher  rolls  into  and  through  the 
lower  with  broad  everlasting  circulations.  And 
furthermore,  that  while  divine  and  spiritual  influx 
are  absolute,  physical  influx,  and  physical  under- 
standing of  influx,  are  impossible,  because  the  deter- 
mination  is   valvular  and  moves   the   other   way; 


THE  HUMAN  FORM  AS  CAPACITY, 


505 


because  smallness  has  overtaken  each  lower  plane; 
because  its  will,  however  ambitious,  is  turned  out- 
ward ;  and  because  it  aims  only  to  touch  by  points ; 
whereas  real  influx  rolls  on  by  great  necks  and 
trunks  of  power  and  life,  and  by  these  alone  the 
descending  universe  stands  solid  and  columnar  as 
the  throne  and  footstool  of  the  Almighty. 

To  conclude  for  practice,  the  divine  influx  is  like 
the  act  of  a  great  prince  to  a  poor  and  unworthy 
attendant,  a  man  of  proved  incapacity  to  control 
himself,  or  to  handle  without  harm  the  bread  and 
wine  of  more  than  one  meal  at  a  time.  In  that  case 
the  communicated  good  has  no  relation  to  the 
princely  means,  but  solely  to  the  princely  wisdom ; 
it  is  bare  sustenance  that  is  given.  Yet  the 
whole  breadth  of  the  man's  need  is  considered 
therein;  and  the  gift  will  visibly  broaden  as  the 
reception  is  deserved;  so  that  what  now  drips  in 
drops  will  run  like  a  river  when  regeneration  is 
complete.  The  rule  is  that  the  influx  is  as  broad  as 
the  virtue  of  the  man  into  which  it  flows;  and  sus- 
tains his  real  life  thereby. 

CXXII. 

THE  HUMAN  FORM  AS  CAPACITY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 


Man,  the  minister  and  interpreter  of  the  Lord,  is 
the  minister  and  interpreter  of  existence  in  propor- 
tion to  the  truth  of  his  mental  form,  and  the  good- 
ness of  the  ends  which  he  carries  out  in  its  intel- 
lectual exercise.  The  transmission  of  the  Word  to 
men  through  human  instrumentality,  through  pro- 
phets and  inspired  penmen,  and  the  communication 
of  spiritual  life  to  appointed  teachers  when  required, 


1 


5o6 


THE  HUMAN  FORM  AS 


CAPACITY  OF  KNOWLEDGE, 


attests  the  higher  ministry  here  asserted,  without 
which  indeed  a  written  Word  and  a  perpetually 
opened  revelation  would  be  impossible.  This 
depends  upon  an  overruling  of  the  human  form  for 
divine  purposes;  and  this  in  its  turn  implies  that  the 
human  form  is  capable  of  bearing  the  stress  and 
carrying  out  the  purpose  of  such  supernal  com- 
munications. 

Capacity  for  all  knowledge  that  is  needful   for 
mankind  in  any  state  now  or  to  come,  is  written 
down  in  this  fact,  and  comes  out  of  its  accomplish- 
ment.    There  is  nothing  necessary  to  our  being  that 
cannot  be  revealed,  and  in  its  measure  rationally 
revealed;  the  human  form  from  the   soul   to    the 
body,  and  from  the  spirit  through  the  mind  to  the 
senses,  under  divine  guidance,  is  an  organ  sufficient 
for  such  enlightenment.     As  a  quadrant  or  a  sextant 
m  the  hands  of  a  man  for  showing  height  and  place 
without  material  span   and   measurement,   so  is   a 
human  form  in  the  hands  of  God  for  showing  to  the 
man  himself,  and  to  mankind,  the  truths  and  condi- 
tions of  depths  beyond  sense,  and  of  worlds  beyond 
the  faculties  of  nature. 

But  then  for  ultimate  knowledge  of  this  kind,  the 
knowing  apparatus  must  be  the  human  form,  and  no 
other.  Every  man  is  in  the  human  form  in  one 
sense  so  long  as  he  lives  in  this  world;  it  is  as 
a  visible  fact  compulsory  for  all.  But  within,  it  is 
twofold;  an  internal  human  form  of  bettering  facul- 
ties striving  to  come  down  into  daily  life,  and 
an  internal  form  of  passionate  selfhood  doing  battle 
with  the  former,  and  aiming  to  fill  the  man  with  its 
own  lines  of  organization.  If  this  triumphs,  the 
human  form  is  subverted,  and  a  monstrous  face, 
brain  and  person,  are  immediately  behind  the  skin 


507 


and  appearance,  and  under  the  cloak  of  the 
visible  frame.  To  this  person,  revelation  of  high 
knowledge,  and  acquisition  of  true  knowledge,  are 
impossible,  save  by  hearing,  on  second  hand  motives, 
and  by  ways  that  are  false  in  the  conception,  and 
fallacy  in  the  working.  The  human  form  adequate 
to  anything  beyond  corporeal  and  sensual  science,  is 
out  of  such  a  person;  and  if  he  reveals  something 
ultimately,  it  is  the  doctrines,  pretexts  and  persua- 
sions of  the  abyss.  To  recur  to  an  old  example,  the 
devil-form  of  cruelty,  bent  in  earnest  love  of  truth 
into  the  violation  trough,  elicits  only  devil's  facts,  of 
which  there  is  a  universe  to  be  known. 

The  true  human  form  does  however  reveal.  For 
it  is  the  finite  end  of  creation,  and  sums  up  this 
world  in  its  convolutions;  and  is  open  to  the  spiritual 
world.  It  is  eminently  partible  in  obeisance  to  divine 
purposes;  and  admits  of  separation  into  lower  and 
higher  states  and  organisms;  its  willing  will  is  to  be 
taken  to  pieces  as  an  instrument,  and  used  by  a 
hand  above  the  selfhood,  without  fear  or  resistance; 
and  thus  to  be  brought  to  bear  upon  plane  after 
plane  of  objects;  to  perceive  new  degrees;  and  to 
enter  worlds  of  perception  beyond  natural  light.  Its 
last  eye  being  single,  or  in  the  human  form,  the  whole 
body  is  full  of  light.  This  form  is  the  new  organon  of 
the  sciences;  the  New  Jerusalem  organon  of  them  all. 

The  separations  here  spoken  of  are  twofold.  First, 
the  severance  of  the  man  from  sensual  thought,  and 
its  incessant  questionings  against  higher  perceptions ; 
and  his  admission  within  the  lines  of  new  intuitive 
sense.  This  involves  a  flexibility  of  the  whole 
mind;  capability  of  giving  up  old  ways  of  thought; 
the  sufferance  of  an  inward  revolution  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  natural  faculties;  preparation  by  prayer 


%) 


» ' 


!• 


5o8 


THE  HUMAN  FORM  AS 


CAPACITY  OF  KNO  WLEDGE. 


ii; 


for  influx;  and  the  ascription  of  penetration  and  suc- 
cessful insight  to  i\\Q  Father  of  lights.  Each 
intuition  thus  gained  is  a  separation  from  the  rule  of 
the  outward  world,  and  a  reversal  of  its  appearances; 
in  short,  detailed  entry,  truth  by  truth,  into  a  new 
world  in  nature,  on  which  a  new  practical  man  is  to 
stand  supreme. 

The  second  set  of  separations  is  more  organic,  and 
not  of  the  intellect  prominently  or  only.    It  consists 
in  the  displacement  of  organic  planes  of  power,  and 
in  laying  them  by  for  a  time  so  that  they  are  no 
longer  employed  upon  objects.     In  this  way,  the 
natural  senses,  and  the  natural  body,  can  become 
quiescent  as  in  sleep,  and  an  interior  man  usually 
adjoined  and  determined  to  them,  be  emancipated 
and  dis-anchored,  and  be  set  over  against  his  own 
proper  objects  with  new  senses  and  determinations. 
He  then  sees  the  special  world  to  which  he  is  opened, 
or,  as  the  saying  is,  enjoys  open  vision.     And  what- 
ever outward  planes  or  world-lenses  are  taken  off,  the 
human  form  above  them  sees  the  state  that  transcends 
their  perceptions  and  desires.    And  according  to  the 
enfranchisement,  the  people  of  that  plane  are  seen 
and  the  man  is  among  them  with  all  his  '^  body,  parts 
and  passions  "  in  their  degree.    This  is  not  a  natural 
process;  yet  it  is  according  to,  and  correlated  with, 
the  lines  of  nature;  and  is  attested  throughout  con' 
sciousness  in  the  movements  of  thought,  which  are 
heralds  of,  and  preparations  for,  the  movements  of 
men  in  all  their  worlds. 

The  natural  man,  of  himself,  resists  these  separa- 
tions  with  all  his  might,  and  especially  the  cardinal 
instance  of  them  which  occurs  in  the  death  of  the 
body;  and  he  would  live  for  ever  here.  He  has  his 
faculties  connected  together  by  selfish  bands  of  fear, 


509 


and  feels  safest  and  most  coherent  when  his  blood  is 
thickest  and  he  is  most  ^'  conglutinated."  His 
tendency  is  to  a  ''simplism"  that  does  not  belong  to 
the  human  form.  This  is  his  device  to  know  no- 
thing beyond  matter,  space,  and  time.  And  yet 
death  will  take  him  to  pieces,  and  lay  his  natural 
mind  upon  its  oblivious  shelf 

Two  instances,  which  will  serve  for  many,  show 
how  the  human  form  in  a  spiritual  man  is  made  use 
of  for  revelation  of  what  it  is  necessary  to  know. 
They  are  cardinal  facts  from  Swedenborgs  case. 
1.  As  a  prepared  man,  with  an  organism  willing  to 
the  use,  he  underwent  the  process  of  the  dying,  his 
spirit  was  demonstratively  separated  from  his  natural 
body,  and  raised  into  the  spiritual  world;  he  watched 
the  process,  and  saw  the  serving  angels  at  his  head 
and  at  his  feet,  and  "heard  their  cogitative  speech;" 
and  he  felt  and  knew  that  the  power  which  sensibly 
drew  him  from  the  intricacies  of  his  mortal  body  was 
divine,  and  that  resurrection  is  no  natural  process, 
but  from  the  attraction  of  the  Lord  alone.  This  is 
described  in  detail  in  his  Arcana  Ccelestia,  n.  168- 
189.  Because  he  was  a  man,  this  could  happen  to 
him;  but  also  because  there  was  a  divine  use  in- 
volved; viz.,  to  teach  men  of  the  very  facts  of  death 
where  knowledge  otherwise  ceases,  and  where  fear 
and  falsity  often  begin;  to  make  all  who  have  to  die 
participant  in  the  merciful  knowledge  that  death  is 
but  an  appearance,  and  instant  resurrection  the 
reality  which  it  hides;  which,  as  knowledge,  can  be 
given  in  no  other  way.  Therefore  the  human  form, 
which  in  its  outer  degree  is  the  subject  of  death  in 
all  of  us,  in  that  man  was  put  through  the  process, 
and  the  knowledge  of  it  was  thus  communicated  to 
mankind. 


5IO 


THE  HUMAN  FORM  AS 


CAPACITY  OF  KNOWLEDGE, 


511 


2.  By  the  same  human  form,  and  its  unalterable 
capacity  of  change,  Svvedenborg  was  enabled  to  be 
present  in  the  heavens  and  in  the  hells,  and  to  brino- 
information  about  them  both.    This  was  also  effected 
by  divine  means;  by  the  quiescence  of  the  natural 
faculties,  and  thereby,  and  thereafter,  by  the  open- 
ing of  interior  planes  and  states.     In  the  spiritual 
world,   similarity  of  state  produces  presence;    and 
with  the  concurrent  life  and  motives  of  the  man,  in- 
tercourse as  in  the  natural  world.      These  "high 
capacious  powers  folded    up"  in  others,  were  un- 
folded in  this  instance,  and  hence  the  experiences  of 
Swedenborg  are  due  to  the  capacities  of  the  human 
form  for  knowledge  and  reality,  made  actual  under  a 
divine  hand. 

It  is  not  needful  to  say  more  on  this  topic,  but 
these  instances,  never  contradicted,  demonstrate  that 
there  is  no  realm  from  the  knowledge  of  which  the 
true  man  is  shut  off  when  it  will  do  him  any  good  to 
know  it;  and  that  his  human  form  is  itself  the  oro-an 
through  which  it  can  be  known.  And  to  compfete 
the  coherence  of  the  instrument,  his  intellect  is  in 
the  human  form,  and  thus  is  levelled  at  the  entire 
universe  of  objects,  all  of  which  involve  divine  intel- 
lections. 

And  as,  when  God  pleases,  man  can  traverse  the 
spiritual  world  for  informations  of  use,  so  also  under 
instruction  he  can  penetrate  the  secrets  of  his  own 
body,  stand  under  the  arch  of  the  temple  of  its 
organization,  and  see  the  soul  which  inspires  its  ends, 
and  the  reasons  of  the  lines  which  convey  them.  The 
separation  needful  here  now  and  for  the  coming  time, 
is  from  the  lusts  of  science,  from  its  selfishness  and 
pride,  from  its  infidelity,  and  its  violations.  Ardent 
desire  to  know  apart  from  these  things  is  of  God, 


and  will  be  an  eye  deeply  inward  upon  a  body  full 
of  lisfht,  and  the  orenius  of  the  human  form  itself  will 
receive  and  impart  the  truths  in  question.     It  is 
hard  to  think  that  when  selfish  power  which  seems 
so  very  powerful  is  put  aside,  the  real  power  will  be 
given;  for  self-willed  study  to  the  natural  scientist 
seems  all  and  in  all.     Yet  there  is  a  prophecy  that 
such  is  the  fact,  as  follows  :  ''  For  thus  saith  the 
Lord  unto  the  eunuchs  that  keep  my  sabbaths,  and 
choose  the  things  that  please  me,  and  take  hold  of 
my  covenant;  even  unto  them  will  I  give  in  mine 
house  and  within  my  walls  a  place  and  a  name  better 
than  of  sons  and  of  daughters  :  I  will  give  them  an 
everlasting  name,  that  shall  not  be  cut  off"  (Isaiah 
Ivi.  4,  5).     This  signifies  that  a  self-enforced  absti- 
nence from  any  strong  natural  lust,  although  it  takes 
away  the  path  of  the  lust,  and  all  the  knowledge  of 
the  path,  and  seems  to  render  the  mind  impotent 
and  barren,  yet  is  blest  with  an  entry  into  the  Divine 
Sonship  and  counsels,  is  safe  in  the  divine  truth,  and 
is   essentially  fruitful  in  the  knowledge  of  what  is 
good  and  true;  the  lines  whereof  such  a  eunuch,  such 
a  virtue,   perceives  with  no  break  or  faltering  of 
faculties,  but  with  advancing  regeneration,  out  of  the 
Word,  through  the  works ;  the  first  self-denial,  the 
eunuch,  being  the  Lord's   organ  in  the  man,  and 
united  with  the  Creator  and  the  eternal.    The  appli- 
cation here  is  for  the  promise  that  the  meek  shall 
inherit  the  earth ;  that  the  gentle  conscience  is  the 
key  to  the  truths  of  the  natural  world. 

The  separation  and  experimentation  here  are  the 
opposite  of  the  violational  methods  in  vogue  among 
the  scientists :  they  are  the  subjugation  of  sensuality, 
whereas  violationism  is  the  triumph  of  sensuality,  and 
its  murderous  intent  and  presence  inside  other  living 


[ 


'V 


512 


THE  HUMAN  FORM,  ETC, 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE, 


m 


beings;  they  stand  as  self-denials  before  problems 
until  the  appointed  time  of  knowledge  and  insight 
comes.    Gentleness  and  love  of  the  one  kindred  blood 
of  which  all  the  families  of  the  earth  are  made,  is 
the  tracking  power  that  perceives  their  innermost 
scientific  truths.     And  then  for  the  greater  organic 
realm  of  spiritual  intromissions,  the  means,  thouo-h 
fearful,  are  gentle  as  sleep,  and  only  require  com- 
plete trust  in  the  divine  preparer  :  indeed  sleep  is  an 
image  of  them;  for  they  involve  the  passivity  of  the 
natural  man,  who  cannot  at  first  hand  know  these 
things,  and  then  the  detachment  of  the  spiritual 
human  form  which  can  know  them.     They  involve 
in  fact  vivi-severance  of  the  man  from  himself ;  and 
bring  the  certainty  of  a  reunion  afterwards;  and  also 
of  the  greater  and  ever-completing  unity  of  the  sub- 
ject who  can  thus  yield  himself  up  a  living  sacrifice 
on  the  altar  of  the  divine  experiment. 

These  facts  underlie  all  powerful  work  of  imagina- 
tion and  all  art-representation  in  this  world.     When 
a  Shakespeare  is  present  with  most  bodily  genius  in 
distant  ages  and  countries,  and  as,  for  instance,  in 
''Antony   and    Cleopatra,"   becomes    a   crystal-life 
dramatically  populous  for  an  epoch,  his  very  flaws 
the  prisms  of  men  and  things  :  when  an  Elizabeth 
Thompson,  like  a  modern  Valkyria,  weaves  the  web 
and  woof  of  a  battle,  moves  unperceived  in  its  vol- 
cano, draws  its  lines  of  passions  and  ministers  its 
deaths;  when  the  maiden  stands,  as  no  captain  can 
stand,  ''where  the  war-flags  wade  in  the  waging 
hosts,"— the  mind  sees  at  once  that  there  is  a  faculty 
at  work  that  beggars  the  senses  ;  that  comprehends 
the  vitals  of  things  without  breaking  their  surfaces; 
a  faculty  that  puts  Warwickshire  and  London  and 
spaces  and  times  aside,  and  goes  direct  to  the  heart 


of  events  with  no  players  or  maidens  hand,  but 
with  a  real  presence  descended  from  the  immortal 
life.  For  in  the  spiritual  world,  love  and  thought, 
and  the  imagination  born  of  their  union,  cleave  the 
appearances  of  space,  and  are  present  where  they 
strongly  will.  All  such  cases  as  these,  and  all  acute 
perceptions,  and  realizations  of  such  perceptions  in 
words,  arts,  machineries,  or  acts,  belong  to  the  vivi- 
severances  of  the  human  form,  and  to  the  power  of 
the  detached  and  emancipated  parts  to  live  for  a  time 
in  their  own  sphere  and  its  intelligence.  What  is 
called  genius  is  no  other  than  this;  and  a  main 
characteristic  of  it  is,  that  it  does  not  permanently 
inhabit  the  private  man  who  seems  to  own  it,  but 
burns  and  shines  under  the  provident  eye  of  God,  as 
his  occasional  minister  and  interpreter  to  the  age. 

The  human  lens  and  light,  w^hich  is  the  human 
form,  is  fourfold  in  use  and  power  beyond  the  senses. 
It  can  know  God  and  see  Him  when  it  is  pure  in 
heart.  It  can  know  the  universe  of  nature,  all  opa- 
city notwithstanding.  It  can  know  what  is  in  men. 
It  can  explore  the  spiritual  world.  All  this  on  the 
side  of  truth,  whose  first  aspect  is  knowledge.  Man, 
by  the  divine  assistance,  can  be  separated  from  him- 
self, and  find  his  true  sanity  and  its  penetration 
above  himself. 


CXXIII. 


THE    GREAT   WHITE    THRONE. 


It  must  strike  some  readers  that  the  Word  of  God 
is  expressly  silent  concerning  many  details  in  the 
pages  of  this  book,  and  that  any  narrative  of  the 

2  K 


)■'  ■» 


* 


I  ■ 

♦  • 


SH 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE. 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE, 


spiritual  world,  and  any  particulars  about  another 
life,  are  supplements  to  the  Christian  Eevelation, 
and  not  an  integral  part  of  it.  Especially  it  may  be 
argued  that  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ  has 
said  little  about  such  things,  and  that  therefore  it  is 
not  important  to  know  them. 

Time  fails  here  to  answer  these  reverent  objec- 
tions in  detail,  though  they  deserve  a  most  respect- 
ful answer.  But  the  general  reply  is,  that  though  the 
letter  of  the  Word  appears  to  be  reticent  on  these 
subjects,  the  spiritual  sense,  when  opened,  is  seen 
to  enter  into  them.  The  inmost  sense  treats  of  the 
Lord  alone,  and  the  glorification  of  His  Humanity. 
The  internal  senses  treat  of  the  heavens,  and  of 
all  heavenly  principles  which  lead  thither.  The 
letter  is  '^the  clouds  of  heaven"  in  which  these 
things  come  to  men.  And  a  prepared  man,  an 
illuminated  reason,  instructed  in  the  internal  senses, 
and  intromitted  into  their  worlds,  expounds  that 
the  Word,  so  far  from  beinor  silent  concernino-  the 
immortal  state,  is  replete  with  its  conditions,  its 
philosophy,  its  principles  and  doctrines,  in  every 
inspired  line:  shows  where  it  is,  how  it  is,  and  what 
it  is. 

One  thing  is  seldom  thought  of  in  regard  to  the 
Word;  that  it  differs  from  other  books  as  its 
Author  differs  from  men.  For  the  most  part  all 
words  and  sentences  are  of  the  depth  of  those  who 
utter  them.  Two  and  two  make  four,  is  a  sentence 
different  in  compass  in  the  mouths  of  a  rustic  and  a 
mathematician  :  in  the  one  case  it  is  applied  to 
apples  or  to  pence,  or  to  daily  objects  exclusively; 
in  the  other  case  it  stands  related  to  all  problems 
of  numbers,  though  capable  of  limit  to  the  use  of 
addition    here   also.      The   rule    applied    onwards 


515 


suggests  that  meaning  comes  in  as  the  wise  man 
comes  on;  so  that  at  last  the  commonest  phrases 
may  be  inspired  with  a  great  life  which  does  not 
appear  on  the  surface.  And  if  it  were  certain  of 
any  form  of  words  that  God  had  spoken  it,  then  it 
were  equally  certain,  against  appearance  of  its 
simplicity,  which  might  be  accounted  for  by  our 
need  of  hearing,  that  its  contents  are  infinite  and 
eternal,  are  God  Himself,  serviceable  to  the  human 
being,  but  beyond  his  gauge  at  last.  For  example, 
in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  when  we  say,  ^^  Father  of  us. 
Who  art  in  the  heavens,  hallowed  be  Thy  name,"  we 
have  been  taught  a  form  by  the  Lord  for  addressing 
Himself;  for  He  is  our  Father,  firstly  and  especially 
in  His  Divine  Humanity.  But  ''Father  of  us" 
implies  that  He,  the  Divine  Good,  is  only  the 
Author  of  all  that  is  good  in  us,  and  not  of  our- 
selves otherwise.  And  ''of  us"  implies  every 
relation  of  our  lives  as  descending  from  this  source. 
It  also  means  that  He  is  no  private  father  of  a 
private  family  only,  but  of  all  mankind,  for  there  is 
no  limiting  "  us  "  to  a  less  sense  than  all  of  us.  It 
means  every  being  for  good,  and  prays  for  no  ex- 
ceptions ;  and  thus  extends  to  heaven  and  its 
societies.  "Who  art  in  the  heavens,"  signifies  the 
divine  personality  as  the  ground  of  the  heavens; 
and  implies  that  man  knows  by  conscience  and 
influx  into  it  what  heaven  is  when  he  chooses;  for 
the  Lord  appeals  to  known  terms,  and  this  phrase 
signifies  that  the  principles  of  heaven  are  plain 
enough  to  man.  '^  Hallowed  be  Thy  name,"  prays 
that  Jesus  Christ,  the  Divine  Humanity,  the  name 
of  God,  also  the  whole  face  of  the  Word,  may  be 
intimately  acknowledged  to  be  holy,  and  that  thus 
His  infinite  light  may  strike  our  minds,  and  His 


5i6 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE, 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE, 


kingdom  come.  These  openings  of  such  a  prayer 
could  have  no  existence  within  it  if  it  were  spoken 
by  one  man  to  another;  if  a  good  child  addressed 
his  own  father  in  the  same  words,  they  would  be 
limited  by  his  father;  whereas,  coming  from  God, 
and  going  up  to  God,  they  are  unlimited  as  God. 

Swedenborg  says  of  this  prayer  that  it  fills  the 
heavens,  and  cannot  be  exhausted  to  eternity.  How 
should  it,  when  ''  Father  of  us,"  spoken  by  the  Lord, 
means  a  different  face  of  mercy  and  love  from  one 
state  to  another  for  all  mankind  for  ever. 

So  also  "  I  am,"  spoken  by  a  man,  involves  the 
man's  dimension;  but  "I  am,"  spoken  by  the  Lord, 
contains  the  movement  and  doctrine  of  the  Godhead. 

Now  the  entire  Word  is  thus  divinely  circum- 
stanced, because  it  is  spoken  out  of  a  spiritual  sense, 
which  descends  by  gradations  of  light  from  the 
highest. 

And  a  reason  of  the  present  remarks  is,  to  recur 
again  to  the  attitude  of  the  sciences  of  men  to  the 
Word,  and  of  the  Word  to  the  sciences. 
^  It  seems  as  if  the  writer,  with  slender  justifica- 
tion from  Scripture,  has  laid  great  stress  upon  the 
bearing  that  the  present  prosecution  of  the  sciences 
exerts  upon  private  and  public  life,  upon  the  common 
weal  and  the  religious  weal.  It  seems  as  if  Scrip- 
ture touches  science  only  inferentially,  and  clergy 
are  content  to  leave  things  as  they  are  if  science 
can  be  held  back  from  attacking  faith.  But  our 
case  is  different.  For  the  internal  of  the  Word 
contains  a  complete  history,  from  the  beginning,  of 
the  insurrection  and  assault  of  the  sciences  upon  the 
religious  life ;  a  record  and  monument  for  ever  of 
their  redemption;  and  of  their  committal  to  free- 
will afterwards,  to  serve  the  salvation,  or  minister 


5^7 


the  perdition,  of  the  private  man  according  to  his 
choice. 

Egypt, — again  remember  the  name, — stands  in 
the  Word  for  science  in  its  whole  significance.  If 
this  be  so,  then  the  Word  is  not  silent,  but  vocal 
from  Genesis  to  Revelation  on  the  subject  of  science. 
The  necessity  to  go  down  into  Egypt  for  corn, 
administered  by  an  Israelite  who  was  Lord  of 
Egypt;  the  multiplication  of  the  children  of  Israel 
in  Egypt ;  the  detailed  plagues  on  Egypt  before 
Pharaoh  would  allow  the  Israelites  to  depart;  the 
severe  distance  for  the  self-willed  children  of 
Jehovah  from  Egypt  to  Canaan;  the  guiding  God 
who  was  needful  in  the  intervening  wilderness; — if 
these  are  details  of  the  relations  of  the  human  mind 
to  the  kingdom  of  the  sciences  past  and  present, 
then  is  the  Word  full  indeed  upon  the  subjects 
which  have  occupied  us  in  these  pages.  Further- 
more, the  prophets  are  continually  concerned  about 
the  same  Egypt,  when  yet  the  geographical  Egypt 
is  but  a  name  and  a  tradition  to  the  Jews.  The 
inspiration  of  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  is  full  of  Egypt, 
its  present  sin  and  doom,  and  the  future  salvation 
and  glory  of  its  state.  The  Lord  also  Himself  went 
down  into  Egypt,  and  the  prophecy  was  fulfilled, 
Out  of  Egypt  have  I  called  my  son.  And  in  the 
Apocalypse  occurs  the  phrase,  shining  with  a 
terrible  light  on  the  deeds  of  the  present  hour, 
^'  That  city  which  spiritually  is  called  Sodom  and 
Egypt,  where  also  our  Lord  was  crucified;"  and 
which  is  a  clear  prophecy  that  the  present  violators 
were  to  come  and  are  provided  for;  and  that  they 
would  be  conjoined  with  science  as  Sodom  is  here 
conjoined  with  Egypt. 

In  order  to  show  the  broad  front  which  the  Word 


I* 


5i3 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE. 


presents  to  human  sciences,  and  how  revelation 
in  the  interests  of  man  penetrates  the  Egyptian 
darkness,  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  Isaiah  is  here 
transcribed  : — 

"  The  burden  of  Egypt.  Behold,  the  Lord  rideth 
upon  a  swift  cloud,  and  shall  come  into  Egypt  :  and 
the  idols  of  Egypt  shall  be  moved  at  His  presence, 
and  the  heart  of  Egypt  shall  melt  in  the  midst  of  it. 
"And  I  will  set  the  Egyptians  against  the 
Egyptians  :  and  they  shall  fight  every  one  against 
his  brother,  and  every  one  against  his  neighbour; 
city  against  city,  and  kingdom  against  kingdom. 

"  And  the  spirit  of  Egypt  shall  fail  in  the  midst 
thereof;  and  I  will  destroy  the  counsel  thereof: 
and  they  shall  seek  to  the  idols,  and  to  the  charmers, 
and  to  them  that  have  familiar  spirits,  and  to  the 
wizards. 

"  And  the  Egyptians  will  I  give  over  into  the 
hand  of  a  cruel  lord ;    and  a  fierce  king  shall  rule 
over  them,  saith  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts. 
^  "  And  the  waters  shall  fail  from  the  sea,  and  the 
river  shall  be  wasted  and  dried  up. 

''  And  they  shall  turn  the  rivers  far  away  ;  and 
the  brooks  of  defence  shall  be  emptied  and  dried 
up  :  the  reeds  and  flags  shall  wither. 

"  The  paper  reeds  by  the  brooks,  by  the  mouth  of 
the  brooks,  and  everything  sown  by  the  brooks, 
shall  wither,  be  driven  away,  and  be  no  more. 

''  The  fishers  also  shall  mourn,  and  all  they  that 
cast  angle  into  the  brooks  shall  lament,  and  they 
that  spread  nets  upon  the  waters  shall  languish. 

'^Moreover  they  that  work  in  fine  flax,°and  they 
that  weave  networks,  shall  be  confounded. 

"And  they  shall  be  broken  in  the  purposes 
thereof,  all  that  make  sluices  and  ponds  for  fisli. 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE, 


519 


"  Surely  the  princes  of  Zoan  are  fools,  the  counsel 
of  the  wise  counsellors  of  Pharaoh  is  become 
brutish  :  how  say  ye  unto  Pharaoh,  I  am  the  son 
of  the  wise,  the  son  of  ancient  kings  ? 

"  Where  are  they  ?  where  are  thy  wise  men  ? 
and  let  them  tell  thee  now,  and  let  them  know  what 
the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  purposed  upon  Egypt. 

"  The  princes  of  Zoan  are  become  fools,  the 
princes  of  Noph  are  deceived ;  they  have  also 
seduced  Egypt,  even  they  that  are  the  stay  of  the 

tribes  thereof. 

"  The  Lord  hath  mingled  a  perverse  spirit  in  the 
midst  thereof ;  and  they  have  caused  Egypt  to  err 
in  every  work  thereof,  as  a  drunken  man  staggereth 
in  his  vomit. 

"Neither  shall  there  be  any  work  for  Egypt, 
which  the  head  or  tail,  branch  or  rush,  may  do. 

"In  that  day  shall  Egypt  be  like  unto  women  ; 
and  it  shall  be  afraid  and  fear  because  of  the  shak- 
ing of  the  hand  of  the  Lord  of  hosts,  which  he 
shaketh  over  it. 

''  And  the  land  of  Judah  shall  be  a  terror  unto 
Eoypt ;  every  one  that  maketh  mention  thereof 
shall  be  afraid  in  himself,  because  of  the  counsel 
of  the  Lord  of  hosts,  which  He   hath  determined 

against  it. 

"In  that  day  shall  five  cities  in  the  land  of 
Egypt  speak  the  language  of  Canaan,  and  swear  to 
the  Lord  of  hosts  :  one  shall  be  called,  The  city  of 
destruction. 

"  In  that  day  shall  there  be  an  altar  to  the  Lord 
in  the  midst  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  a  pillar  at 
the  border  thereof  to  the  Lord. 

''  And  it  shall  be  for  a  sign  and  for  a  witness  unto 
the  Lord  of  hosts  in  the  land  of  Egypt :  for  they 


520 


2  HE  GREAT  WHITE  7  HE  ONE. 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE, 


521 


shall  cry  unto  the  Lord  because  of  the  oppressors, 
and  He  shall  send  them  a  Saviour,  and  a  great  one! 
and  He  shall  deliver  them. 

*'And  the  Lord  shall  be  known  to  Egypt,  and 
the  Egyptian  shall  know  the  Lord  in  that  day,  and 
shall  do  sacrifice  and  oblation  ;  yea,  they  shall  vow 
a  vow  unto  the  Lord,  and  perform  it. 

''  And  the  Lord  shall  smite  Egypt  :  He  shall 
smite  and  heal  it;  and  they  shall  return  even  to 
the  Lord,  and  He  shall  be  entreated  of  them,  and 
shall  heal  them. 

''  In  that  day  shall  there  be  a  highway  out  of 
Egypt  to  Assyria,  and  the  Assyrian  shall  come  into 
Egypt,  and  the  Egyptian  into  Assyria,  and  the 
Egyptians  shall  serve  with  the  Assyrians. 

''  In  that  day  shall  Israel  be  the  third  with  Egypt 
and  with  Assyria,  even  a  blessing  in  the  midst  of 
the  land. 

''  Whom  the  Lord  of  hosts  shall  bless,  saying, 
Blessed  be  Egypt  my  people,  and  Assyria  the  work 
of  my  hands,  and  Israel  mine  inheritance." 

The  occasion  does  not  allow  of  a  detailed  exposition 
of  the  spiritual  sense;  but  the  reader  who  bears  in 
mind  that  the  condemned  Egypt  signifies  human 
science  as  a  will  and  way  of  the  selfhood,  determined 
to  know  by  studious  egotism  what  can  only  be 
known  by  revelation  from  God,  and  to  act  perversely 
upon  the  ground  of  a  world  of  accursed  knowledges, 
will  see  the  heads  of  the  divine  accusation  against 
such  science;  and  indeed  these  have  been  explained 
somewhat  in  the  previous  pages.  It  is  suflBcient  to 
say  that  the  imagery  of  this  chapter,— the  idolatry, 
the  strife,  the  disorder  and  the  insurrection,  the 
superstition  and  necromancy,  the  tyranny  and  fierce- 
ness, the  loss  of  waters  and  the  drought  of  rivers, 


the  withering  of  the  reeds,  the  failure  of  fish;  the 
drunkenness  of  spirit,  and  the  defect  of  service,  the 
terror  of  Egypt  before  Judah, — consists  in  cor- 
respondences which  pertain  to  Egypt  alone,  and 
which,  rightly  understood,  make  clear  induction  of 
the  fact  that  the  Egypt  here  mentioned  is  no  other 
than  science  on  its  evil  side.  It  was  no  geographical 
Egypt  which  was  thus  singled  for  judgment,  but  an 
Egypt  which  pursues  every  church  and  every  man; 
and  which  especially  in  these  later  ages  aims  to 
supplant  the  eternal  by  the  temporal,  and  to  use  the 
creation  itself  as  a  service  against  the  Creator. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  indicate  that  the 
Word,  so  far  from  being  empty  or  voiceless  on  the 
subject  of  science,  is  full  of  that  subject  from  the  be- 
ginning of  Genesis,  where  a  false  and  forbidden  way 
of  knowing,  marked  the  entry  of  the  first  recorded 
lust  into  the  human  soul,  and  the  desire  to  be  as 
gods  was  the  primary  motive.  This  desire  to  be  as 
gods  underlies  violationism  now,  and  animates  pro- 
toplasm; and  therefore  here,  in  the  earliest  record  of 
revelation,  a  clean  prophecy  is  extant  of  the  aims  of 
scientists  at  the  present  day. 

In  a  word,  where  the  spiritual  sense  is  not  opened, 
and  the  Scripture  not  understood,  the  Sodom  and 
Egypt  of  scientism  is  a  prince  and  a  potentate,  unre- 
buked,  and  heir-apparent  to  the  throne  of  the  world; 
but  when  the  cloud  of  the  letter  is  dissolved,  the 
same  Sodom  and  Egypt  is  the  eldest  malefactor  in 
his  last  arrest,  and  standing  anatomized,  without  a 
pretext,  before  the  great  white  throne. 

Note  here,  before  the  war  begins,  how  great  the 
motives  of  violationism  are  to  elude  this  jurisdiction, 
and  therefore  to  deny  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  Holy 
Word. 


V 

V, 


522 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE. 


Ought  not  statesmen  to  study  these  things?  Is 
it  well  that  such  clear  forecasts  of  the  effects  of 
atheized  science  should  exist  in  the  world,  and  be 
appointed  to  be  read  in  churches,  and  that  those 
who  have  nations  to  govern  should  take  no  heed  of 
the  course  into  which  they  are  drifting  from  per- 
mitted organized  egotism,  and  permitted  abomina- 
tion? Is  it  fair  that  the  plagues  of  science  should 
be  written  down  in  the  Word,  and  that  governments, 
afraid  of  its  ambition  and  malignity,  should  summon 
it  unpolitically  into  the  state,  and  there  enthrone  it 
above  public  order,  and  expose  the  people  to  the 
fierce  heat  of  its  motives  from  below?  In  the  Word 
it  is  the  ally  of  all  the  lusts  of  man,  and  the  ad- 
vocate and  handmaid  of  their  persuasions;  there  is 
no  scruple  in  it,  for  nothing  is  holy  to  it;  and  shall 
the  modern  state,  whose  constitutive  point  is  personal 
liberty  open  to  heaven,  be  invaded  by  this  Sodom 
and  Egypt,  against  the  broadest  lessons  of  the  spirit 
in  the  Word  ? 

But  then  the  statesman,  for  this  mission,  of  keeping 
these  things  in  their  proper  places,  must  admit  and 
study  the  spiritual  sense;  or  the  Word  has  no  voice 
for  him.  And  here  we  see  what  a  practical  matter 
the  spiritual  sense  is;  that  it  is  no  ingenious  machine 
of  correspondences;  but  a  divine  declaration  of  duties 
from  beginning  to  end;  prescribing  to  the  individual 
man  what  to  do  for  the  just  limits  and  boundaries 
of  his  own  mind  and  his  own  humility;  and  to  the 
prime  minister  a  policy  of  independent  righteousness, 
which  shall  keep  special  knowledge  pure,  which  shall 
make  it  inoffensive  and  useful,  which  shall  not  in- 
stal  it  where  wisdom  and  its  charity  alone  should  sit, 
but  summon  it  from  service,  and  release  it  to  service, 
and  teach  it  by  every  commanding  hint  that  it  is 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  CHURCH 


""&. 


523 


never  in  power,  but  in  consultation  provisionally  from 
moment  to  moment,  for  the  glory  of  God  alone,  and 
for  the  good  of  man's  estate. 


CXXIV. 


THE    FUTURE    OF    THE    CHURCH    AND    OF    SOCIETY. 


One  thing  more  requires  to  be  said  of  Swedenborg 
in  concluding  this  case,  which  is  intended  chiefly  for 
the  humane  portion  of  the  scientist  public.  He  was 
no  inaugurator  of  a  new  external  order  in  Church  or 
State  :  no  revolutionary  hand,  either  religious  or 
political;  but  a  rational  teacher,  commissioned  and 
privileged  as  such,  for  all  whom  by  their  own  choice 
it  may  concern.  He  was  not  like  other  founders, 
the  starting-point  of  a  new  mystical  light  which  in- 
fected followers,  and  culminated  in  a  sect.  A  sect 
has  indeed  been  built  upon  his  doctrines,  as  must  be 
the  case  in  countries  where  the  making  of  new 
sects  is  a  habit;  but  his  books  outlie  ecclesiasticisms 
as  fairly  as  the  books  of  Newton  or  Laplace.  He  is 
a  schoolmaster,  where  all  churches  may  learn  things 
new  and  old,  and  apply  them  to  reform,  regeneration, 
and  newness  of  life,  becoming  new  churches  in  the 
process.  Hence,  an  instantaneous  New  Church 
is  as  impossible  as  an  instantaneous  mathematics,  or 
chemistry,  or  geology.  Nay,  more  impossible,  be- 
cause these  walks  are  of  the  head;  but  in  the  true 
church  the  slow  conversion  of  the  motives  of  the 
natural  heart  into  the  motives  of  the  spiritual  heart, 
by  obedience  yielded  to  divine  truths  taught  from 
without,  is  the  slow,  difficult,  painful,  and  ever  in- 
creasing operation.     Hence  Swedenborg  personally 


524 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  CHURCH 


AND  OF  SOCIETY, 


525 


had  no  expectation  that  his  doctrines  would  rapidly 
overspread,  still  less  command,  the  church  and  the 
world.  He  went  on  with  joy  of  industry,  but  left 
the  times  and  places  where  the  light  would  be  re- 
ceived as  matters  with  which  he  could  have  no 
concern.  So  far  from  being  an  impatient  or  a 
fanatic,  he  deposited  his  books  as  the  carboniferous 
era  deposited  its  carbon,  or  as  the  great  forests  laid 
down  under  other  strata;  and  only  knew  with 
certainty  that  there  was  heat  and  light  for  the 
homes  of  men  and  women,  for  churches  and  states, 
whenever  the  grounds  were  fairly  opened  which 
those  deposits  underlie. 

We  may  repeat  what  he  says  on  this  subject  in  his 
Last  Judgment y  n.  74 : — ''I  have  had  various  converse 
with  the  angels,  concerning  the  state  of  the  church 
hereafter.  They  said,  that  things  to  come  they 
know  not,  for  that  the  knowledge  of  things  to  come 
belongs  to  the  Lord  alone,  but  that  they  do  know 
that  the  slavery  and  captivity  in  which  the  man  of 
the  church  was  formerly,  is  removed,  and  that  now, 
from  restored  liberty,  he  can  better  perceive  interior 
truths,  if  he  wills  to  perceive  them,  and  thus  be  made 
more  internal,  if  he  wills  it;  but  that  still  they  have 
slender  hope  of  the  men  of  the  Christian  church,  but 
much  of  some  nation  far  distant  from  the  Christian 
world;  and  therefore  removed  from  infesters;  which 
nation  is  such,  that  it  is  capable  of  receiving  spiritual 
light,  and  of  being  made  a  celestial-spiritual  man : 
and  they  said,  that  at'  this  day  interior  divine 
truths  are  revealed  in  that  nation,  and  are  also 
received  in  spiritual  faith,  that  is,  in  life  and  in 
heart,  and  that  it  worships  the  Lord." 

Of  this   extract   it   may   be   observed   that   the 
African  race  in  Africa,  the  negro  race,  is  the  one 


^  alluded  to  as  the  subject  of  an  interior  revelation, 
and  as  being  removed  from  the  infestation  of  the 
Christian  world.  This  was  of  spiritual  knowledge, 
and  how  far  it  will  be  attested  by  geographical 
explanation  time  will  show;  but  Swedenborg  found 
in  the  life  after  death  how  much  more  readily  the 
negro  races  receive  divine  truth  in  heart  and  life 
and  simple  obedience,  than  the  learned  of  Christen- 
dom and  the  congregations  which  they  lead. 
Throughout  his  works  great  importance  is  attached 
to  the  negro,  and  this  at  a  time  when  no  special 
attention  had  been  called  to  the  Black  question,  and 
before  the  Anti-slavery  movement  was  born.  It  is 
remarkable  that  he  singled  out  this  race  as  the  most 
capable  of  receiving  the  truths  of  love  of  any  exist- 
ing on  the  planet.  This  plea  for  the  negro  capacity 
has  been  followed  by  events.  The  hearts  of  the  best 
men  and  women  have  heard  the  black  man's  cry,  and 
feelinof  that  'Hhe  little  ones"  w^ere  in  danofer,  ad- 
vanced  nations  have  been  summoned  for  Christ  where 
Greek  philosophy  was  indifferent,  and  would  leave 
the  slave  a  slave.  Nay,  one  of  the  great  wars  of 
the  world  has  been  waged  in  order  that  the  poor 
African  should  be  brought  as  a  citizen  into  full  free- 
will. And  at  present  he  is  the  pivot  of  two  con- 
tinents, Africa  and  America;  and  Livingstone  has 
sought  out  and  loved  and  died  for  a  people  that 
Swedenborg  was  the  first  to  rescue,  by  potent  words 
that  still  sound  on,  from  the  false  darkness  of  this 
world  s  shame. 

There  is  yet  one  other  forecast  in  Swedenborg; 
far  it  seems  from  being  realized,  and  it  concerns 
France.  In  his  Apocalypse  Revealed^  n.  740-743, 
he  speaks  of  "  the  noble  French  nation,"  and  argues 
from  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  Apocalypse,  chapter 


i 


If 


526 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  CHURCH 


xvii.  12-14,  where  these  words  occur: — "And  the 
ten  horns  which  thou  sawest  are  ten  kings,  who  have 
received  no  kingdom  as  yet;  but  receive  power  as 
kings  one  hour  with  the  beast.      These  have  one 
mind,  and  they  will  give  their  strength  and  power 
unto  the  beast.     These  shall  fight  with  the  Lamb, 
and  the  Lamb  shall  overcome  them :  for  he  is  Lord 
of  lords,  and  King  of  kings;  and  they  that  are  with 
Him  are  called,  and  chosen,  and  faithful."    The  inter- 
pretation itself  should  be  carefully  studied,  for  it  is 
of  course  not  obvious  on  the  surface;  it  imports  that 
France  will  receive  in  her  life  the  light  of  the  New 
Jerusalem,  and  especially  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine 
Humanity.      But   what   we   are  chiefly  concerned 
with  here  is  the  fact  that  Swedenborg,  who  mentions 
no  other  nationality  in  his  evolution  of  the  spiritual 
sense,  which  is  "abstracted  from  time,  space,  matter, 
and  person,"  here  directly  alludes  to  the  French 
nation.     Now  we  may  take  the  African  to  be  the 
residual  infancy  of  the  heart  of  the  race;  the  French 
to  be  the  limit  of  its  corrupt  civilization.     The  hand 
of  God  on  both  is  portended;  in  the  one  case,  by 
orderly  emancipation  of  all  kinds;  in  the  other,  by 
the  breaking  up,  through  revolution  and  war  and 
anarchy,  of  the  fabric  of  national  and   individual 
lusts.     And  besides  her  general  revolution,  which 
soon  followed  upon  Swedenborg's  words,  there  is  this 
answer  to  his  forecast  from  France  herself,  that  out 
of  her  abyss,  and  through  her  agony,  when  the  hells 
were  visibly  opened  in  her  midst,   there    sounded 
formulas  of  brotherhood  and  right  such  as  no  other 
nation  in  modern  times  has  uttered  or  conceived. 
Where  is  the  English  or  the  German  or  the  Russian 
or  the  American  word   of  fire,  to  compare   with 
"liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,"  were  these  placed 


AND  OF  SOCIETY, 


527 


on  their  divine  ground,  and  derived  from  the  Lord, 
the  Creator  and  Redeemer,  as  their  source.  That 
the  words  are  there,  in  France,  is  much;  she  would 
be  poor  indeed  without  them;  they  are  no  hypocrisy, 
but  a  cry  to  heaven.  They  are  her  natural  basis  for 
a  new  order  of  life. 

It  is  not  uncommon  for  these  great  watchwords, 
springing  apparently  from  the  fervid  genius  of 
revolution,  when  the  old  selfishness  is  in  abeyance 
for  a  moment,  to  be  given  by  the  angel  of  the  future 
in  the  last  hours  of  breaking  states  and  dyino* 
churches ;  and  they  serve  not  only  as  the  torches  of 
nations  through  their  gloom,  but  as  future  vessels 
into  which  divine  life  may  be  poured.  The  Lord  in 
His  Divine  Humanity  may  take  the  sacrament  with 
France  out  of  them  at  last;  for  they  are  golden 
vessels,  and  their  patterns  are  in  heaven. 

So,  too,  in  our  natural  need,  while  Swedenborg  is 
unaccepted,  and  the  national  life  has  sunk  into 
parliament,  one  great  man  among  us,  Thomas 
Carlyle,  has  put  in  burning  propositions  the  doc- 
trines of  use,  and  good  works,  and  righteousness,  of 
veracity,  or  the  truth  of  good,  as  the  sole  substance 
of  the  lives  of  men  and  nations;  and  herein,  so  far  as 
practice  goes,  he  has  laid  a  basis  for  the  universal 
church  wherever  his  works  are  read.  From  lack  of 
the  higher  communication,  he  has  failed  indeed  to 
consecrate  his  standards;  failed  to  derive  these 
virtues  by  acknowledgment  from  their  only  source; 
but  still  the  watchwords  are  given;  and  in  them  he 
has  brought  divine  formulas  to  his  nation  and  his 
age,  and  measurably  prepared  its  wilderness  for  the 
New  Jerusalem. 

The  mere  appearance  of  such  works  and  words  is 
a    sign   of  the   cataclysm   which  is   comino^  upon 


528 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  CHURCH 


society;  the  deep  sleep  of  parliament,  drugged  with 
'^interests/'  is  a  countersign.  In  all,  a  New  Church 
is  portended.  The  essence  of  that  church  lies  in  the 
conjunction  of  charity  and  faith.  Charity  is  the 
universal  life  of  good,  its  diligent  fulness  in  the  day's 
work ;  faith  is  the  clear  intelligent  owning  of  it  to 
the  Lord.  These  two  in  one,  in  act,  are  the  plan  of 
salvation. 


PAET  lY. 


A  NEW  AGE. 


cxxv. 


CHARITY. 


It  is  a  powerful  religious  position  that  charity  does 
not  consist  in  almsgiving,  but   in   each   man   and 
woman  shunning  evils  as  sins   against   the   Lord, 
and  doing  the  duties  of  his  or  her  calling,  sincerely, 
justly,  and  faithfully.      In  this  way  charity  does 
consist  in  filling  the  day  with  good  works;  and  this 
great  Christian  virtue  is  rescued  from  the  shadow 
of  patronage  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  hanging  in 
the  air  of  sentiment  on  the  other.    For  with  respect 
to  the  latter  case,  Paul's  definition  of  charity  has  no 
determination  downwards  to  the  uses  of  this  world; 
it  is  the  spirit  of  kindness  expended  in  the  upper 
regions  of  character  and  conduct,  and  not  coming  as 
lord  and  master  into  the  bosoms  and  businesses  of 
mankind.      Here    Swedenborg    departs    from    the 
Pauline  theology,  with  which  indeed  his  works  are 
for  the  most  part  not  co-ordinate,  while  on  the  other 
hand  they  are  rational  streams  from  the  mounts  of 
the  Gospels  and  the  Apocalypse. 

2l 


530 


CHARITY, 


CHARITY, 


531 


"When  we  consider  the  matter  closely,  the  charity 
that  consists  in  doing  the  duties  of  one's  calling  in  the 
world,  sincerely,  justly,  and  faithfully,  leaves  nothing 
outside  it  in  the  way  of  good  works.  It  implies 
that  every  one  has  a  calling,  and  banishes  idleness 
and  indulgence  from  the  road  of  life;  it  enforces 
skill,  diligence,  industry,  rapidity,  calmness,  to  the 
uttermost.  It  is  a  perpetual  incentive  to  a  loving 
and  wise  conscientiousness  in  all  our  relations;  and 
preaches  ''  do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  others 
should  do  unto  you,"  as  the  religion  of  business.  If 
you  would  like  your  work  done  well  by  others,  do 
well,  as  they  would  like,  your  work  for  them.  This 
exacts  the  perfection  of  labour  from  all  men  for  all 
men.  It  is  organific  for  society,  and  disciplines 
every  person  for  his  best  service  in  his  place. 

One  of  its  designations  is  its  great  capacity  of 
taking  trouble  for  others;  so  that  instead  of  merely 
suffering  long  and  being  kind,  it  works  hard,  and  is 
helpful.  Thomas  Carlyle  has  said  that  genius  is  no 
other  than  a  great  capacity  for  taking  trouble;  and 
here,  in  mutual  good  service,  charity  caps  genius, 
and  is  itself  the  genius  of  the  practical  life. 

This  charity  leaves  out  no  almsgiving,  provided 
the  almsgiving  is  a  real  part  of  the  day's  work;  not 
a  mere  impulse;  but  a  work,  from  a  settled  purpose, 
going  wisely  and  prudently  forth  to  its  object.  Yet 
almsgiving  in  itself  is  no  sufficient  work  for  a  day, 
unless  the  hours  be  afterwards  filled  with  its  ad- 
ministration. The  ^gg  to  be  hatched  for  use  must 
not  be  dropped  in  the  ^and,  and  be  left  to  be 
developed  by  the  heat  of  the  general  sun,  or  by  the 
sentiment  of  the  public  mind ;  crocodiles  and  snakes 
thus  commit  their  eggs ;  but  the  hen  sits  until  the 
chickens  are  hatched,  and  then  keeps  in  their  midst. 


The  wealth  that  charity  has  inherited,  or  has  ac- 
quired by  diligence  in  business,  by  trade,  profession, 
handiwork,  literature,  or  merchandise,  is  of  two  parts, 
— 1.  What  the  man  wants  for  the  sustenance  and 
maintenance  of  his  house;  2.  The  overplus  of  this 
on  which  charity  again  has  to  work  both  mentally 
and  administratively.  In  this  division  lies  a  set  of 
problems  for  future  society. 

The  present  faith  of  mankind  is,  that  wealth  be- 
longs to  the  possessor  in  such  a  sense  that  he  has 
full  right  to  spend  it  all  upon  himself.  If  he  has  a 
thousand  a  year  he  has  this  right,  and  if  he  has  half 
a  million  a  year  he  has  this  right  still.  Only  in  the 
latter  event  he  will  be  largely  solicited  by  '^  charities," 
and  be  expected  to  build  churches  and  endow  wings 
of  hospitals.  This  claim  upon  him  is  no  religious  but 
a  social  claim ;  it  knocks  at  no  door  that  opens  to 
his  whole  conscience,  but  appeals  to  him  to  fill  his 
respectable  position  according  to  his  great  estate  as 
a  humane  man  of  society. 

Among  things  to  come  is  an  answer  to  the 
question,  What  is  the  calling  of  wealth,  and  of  great 
wealth,  in  the  commonwealth?  Wealth  here  is 
neither  a  doctor,  nor  a  lawyer,  nor  a  clergyman, 
nor  a  soldier,  nor  a  tradesman,  nor  a  writer.  It  is 
a  totally  indeterminate  calling;  an  unconstituted 
profession.  Its  determination  is  the  point  to  be 
settled. 

It  is  a  dukedom;  a  chieftainship.  Being  a  duke- 
dom, it  has  a  principality  attaclied  to  it.  Its 
revenues  belong  there.  What  is  that  principality? 
It  can  be  no  other  than  a  subjacent  society.  There 
never  yet  was  a  real  dukedom  that  did  not  consist 
of  other  men;  the  real  dukedom  of  Cornwall  con- 
sists of  all  the  men  and  women  of  Cornwall.     The 


I 


53^ 


CHARITY, 


CHARITY, 


533 


subjacency  is  the  ignorance,  lowness,  want,  foulness 
of  habitation,  inferiority  of  manners,  morals  and 
education,  in  the  principality.  Especially  in  so  far 
as  these  things  are  not  the  fruit  of  present  personal 
vice;  that  is,  in  so  far  as  they  have  descended  from 
the  past,  and  are  its  woeful  legacy;  for  of  the  wrecks 
of  vice  now  the  State  takes  cognizance  in  workhouses 
and  prisons;  it  is  the  compulsory  duke  of  rogues 
and  paupers.  But  these  are  not  under  the  dukedom 
of  wealth,  and  need  not  come  before  its  immediate 
administration.  For  even  in  its  highest  positions  it 
is  and  should  remain  an  abiding  property  and  a 
personal  power,  and  the  duke's  freewill,  and  the  free- 
will of  his  people,  are  essential  to  it. 

The  position  is  incontestable  that  no  man  requires 
great  wealth  for  himself;  even  no  king  requires  it; 
but  his  state  and  function  must  be  supported  by 
other  men,  and  some  wealth  passes  well  and  to  the 
purpose  that  way.  It  is  equally  certain  that  a 
spendthrift  can  waste  more  than  he  has,  whatever 
the  amount.  But  as  the  wise  man  does  not  need 
the  wealth,  and  it  is  useless  to  him,  it  belono-s  to 
Use,  and  the  problem  is  to  find  out  the  use  in  every 
special  case. 

If  this  view  be  true  for  the  future,  it  is  clear  that 
wealth  must  descend  from  the  upper  ranks,  and  by 
wise  administration  begin  at  the  bottom  for  the 
redemption  of  the  honest  and  hardworking  lower 
classes.  At  any  given  time,  a  certain  amount  of 
this  redemption  can  be  effected.  For  instance,  by  the 
year  1886,  the  steady  enginery  of  wealth,  diverted 
from  luxury,  vanity,  self-seeking  with  the  people,  and 
personal  indulgence,  and  held  to  that  charity  which 
is  bound  to  urgent  business,  and  believeth  all  things, 
and  knows  no  impossibilities,  or  improbabilities,— 


would  clear  London  of  back  slums,  and  base  the 
virtues  and  industries  of  all  its  good  people  upon 
decent  homes.  The  revenue  accruing  from  these 
would  reascend  to  the  private  dukes,  and  increase 
the  riches  of  their  dominions.  And  then  a  further 
redemption  would  already  stand  clear  before  them; 
and  claim  the  coming  down  of  the  wealth  again  from 
the  upper  hands. 
^  When  this  process  is  begun  on  a  religious  prin- 
ciple, as  the  main  part  of  the  daily  labour  of  dukes, 
casual  charity  may  cease,  its  necessity  supplanted 
by  an  organic  rational  charity  to  be  ingrained  in 
the  course  of  generations  in  the  nature  of  industrial 
society.  At  present,  the  communications  of  the 
charity  which  lies  in  almsgiving,  are  leakages  of 
wealth,  benevolent  flashes  of  gifts  incommensurate 
both  with  the  breadth  of  the  wealth,  and  with  the 
breadth  of  the  want  underneath  it;  whereas  rational 
charity,  or  the  administration  of  the  revenue  of  the 
dukedom  apart  from  the  private  purse  of  the  duke, 
involves  that  the  whole  surplus  income  shall  roll 
through  the  just  wants  of  the  people,  that  is, 
through  the  population  of  the  dukedom;  that  the 
influx  and  circulation  of  the  wealth  shall  be  exactly 
as  its  span  of  power. 

Some  consequences  follow  from  this  new  relation 
of  dukedoms;  which,  improbable  though  it  seems, 
is  as  sure  to  be  established,  and  to  grow,  as  it  is 
sure  that  nominal  Christianity  will  reign  over  every 
continent,  and  that  Mahometanism  and  other  re- 
ligious forms  will  be  subservient  and  decline. 

If  the  basis  of  society  in  the  building  of  dwellings 
were  worthy  of  human  beings,  the  home  would  keep 
within  it  that  sickness  and  calamity  which  are  now 
taken  away  into  public  buildings  because  the  private 


I 


534 


CHARITY, 


rooms  are  too  bad  to  house  them.     This  state  of 
things  does  not  occur  with  the  sick  and  afflicted  of 
the   favoured  classes;    and  as  habitations  are   im- 
proved,   and    as    wealth    is    greater,    and    better 
administered,   it    will    not    be    necessary   for    the 
industrious   poor,    or   be    submitted    to    by   them. 
In  this  way  hospitals,  which  are  guest-houses   in 
defect  of  homes,  will  cease;  and  honest  sickness  lie 
on  its  own  bed,  and  ask  alms  of  no  man.     Establish-  , 
ments  at  various  distances  in  towns  for  the  service 
of  accidents  rest  on  a  different  foundation;  and  so 
does  insanity,  which  belongs,  as  we  have  seen  be- 
fore, to  the  care  of  the  State,  whenever  the  insane 
person  requires  to  be  sequestrated. 

If  the  charity  in  contradistinction  to  the  alms- 
giving of  the  future  were  only  to  yield  sickness  its 
own  home,  and  to  manage  that  men  shall  die 
decently  in  their  own  beds,  the  boon  would  be 
sweet.  The  hospital  exists  against  all  the  claims  of 
sickness,  and  makes  each  man  suffer  and  die  in  a 
large  party  naturally  unsympathizing  by  reason  of 
the  loneness  of  all  sufferinof. 

Decentralization  is  preached  also.  For  what  we 
treat  of  is  religion  over  wealth,  and  wealth,  not  over 
want,  but  over  honest  need ;  and  each  fortune  will 
in  time  be  administered  by  its  own  duke,  though  in 
consentaneous  action  with  other  dukes.  The  force 
as  charity  will  be  centrifugal,  and  centripetal  only 
as  business,  ix.,  as  the  return  of  capital  invested  in 
redeeming  the  bases  of  the  natural  life.  It  will 
have  no  officialism  and  no  compulsion  with  it,  any 
more  than  a  Peabody  lodging-house  requires;  only 
stewards  for  public  order,  and  the  conservation  of 
property.  But  no  connection  with  titular  magnates, 
or  with  the  privy  council.     It  will  not  minister  to 


CHARITY, 


535 


power,  but  give  power  away  by  increasing  the  in- 
dependence and  solvency  and  physique  of  the  lower 
classes.  Yet  it  will  create  administrators  who  are 
trusted  by  the  people,  and  who  may  be  of  use  in 
the  State. 

The  State  however  will  be  to  some  extent  ab- 
sorbed by  the  reign  of  private  leaders  or  dukes, 
whose  rule  will  not  be  otherwise  governmental  than 
that  they  are  masters  in  business  and  Use.     The 
charity  which  lies  in  the  administration  of  wealth, 
for  those  whose  legitimate  day's  work  that  adminis- 
tration is,  and  the  charity  which  lies  in  doing  the 
duties  of  your  calling  whatever  that  may  be,  will 
together  constitute  the  human  mind  and  body  of 
the  country;  and  first  municipal  and  then  general 
government  be  outside  of  it  and  subordinate  to  it; 
so  that  a  revolution  will  have  occurred,  and  the  in- 
dividual   man   with   God    above    him    throughout 
society  will  be  the  centre  of  influence  and  influx, 
and  of  order;  and  the  State,  the  inexpeasive  police 
of  these.     Use  and  its  delight,  not  show  and  its 
amusement,  will  be  in  the  spirit  of  the  whole. 

These   are   fair   conclusions    from    Swedenborgs 
position,  that  charity  does  not  consist  in  almsgiving, 
but  in  first  shunning  evils  as  sins  against  the  Lord, 
and  then  in  doing  the  duties  of  your  calling  sin- 
cerely, justly,  and  faithfully.     They  point  to  wealth 
now  and  here,  because  wealth  is  enormous ;  and  by  no 
way  conceivable  but  a  new  administration  of  it  can 
natural  society  be  redeemed  from  below  upwards. 
Of  course  redemption  in  the  proper  sense  is  of  the 
Lord;    but  so  is  the  redemption  we  here  intend; 
and  which  consists  in  the  righting  of  society  so  far 
as  the  whole  means  in  it  at  any  given  time  allow, 
Here  are  no  questions  of  political  economy ;  but 


536 


CHARITY, 


CHARITY, 


4 


of  the  divine  duties  of  wealth,  and  of  its  administra- 
tion on  remunerative  principles,  which  in  the  long 
run  are  necessary  to  the  new  state.  If  the  way  of 
remuneration  be  not  immediate,  wealth  is  the  one 
thing  that  can  wait;  and  provided  the  principles  of 
its  application  be  sound,  an  advancing  society  is 
certain  to  repay  outlays  with  increasing  interest; 
wealth  at  both  ends  is  the  assurance  of  such  a 
future. 

It  may  be  objected  that  these  are  practical  aifairs, 
and  belong  to  the  present  business  men,  and  that 
they  settle  themselves  by  financial  considerations; 
that  helping  society  does  not  pay  sufficient  interest 
to  carry  wealth  into  investment  in  that  direction; 
and  that  therefore  it  is  dangerous  to  recommend 
unremunerative  schemes  on  a  large  scale.     This  is 
granted;  and  all  we  at  present  demand  is  the  re- 
cognition  that   the   duties   of    superfluous    income 
beyond  what   the   man    and   the    family  need    for 
liouse   and   station,   and    for   security,    are   to   the 
society  from  which  the  wealth  comes.    Among  those 
duties  is  the  conservation  of  the  property  itself;  the 
care  that  it  be  not  given  away,  in  which  case  it 
would  decay  into  alms;  but  that  it  reproduce  and 
increase  itself,  so  as  to  make  the  dukedom  of  the 
possessor  and  administrator  permanent  and  extend- 
ing.     This   is   the   spirit    of  charity.      And   with 
regard  to  its  outgoings  and  investments,  since  the 
recovery  of  society  is  the  aim,  there  is  no  need  to 
forestal  what  they  will  be;  for  that  belongs  to  great 
and  good  business  men  to  find  out;  only  we  may 
rest  assured  that  the  mechanism  of  wealth  that  is  to 
raise  the   human   family  into   greater   decorum  of 
home  and  habitation,  is  not  more    easy  than  the 
discovery  of  material  enginery,  nor  more  to  be  laid 


537 


out  in  great  plans  beforehand  than  railways  and 
telegraphs  and  post-offices  and  the  like,  which  are 
suggested  to  men  in  the  course  of  years,  and  improved, 
corrected  and  founded  afresh  from  time  to  time. 
The  first  main  point  is  that  the  spirit  of  dutiful 
charity  shall  descend,  and  begin  to  work :  that  the 
whole  firmament  of  wealth  shall  be  bowed  down  to 
those  who  require  its  voluminous  influx. 

This  is  the  opposite  of  communism,  which  would 
divide  all  property,  and  give  it  away.  For  the 
charity  we  indicate  gathers  up  everything,  and  makes 
society  into  its  seedfield  and  harvest,  restoring  the 
crop  to  the  proprietor  every  quarter  day.  It  is  his 
to  administer;  and  his  Christian  conscience  in  his 
dukedom,  and  the  example  of  other  like  dukes 
around  him,  is  his  only  compelling  power. 

Here  we  recognize  man  s  place  in  society,  corres- 
ponding to  man's  place  in  nature.  The  higher  plane 
is  founded  upon  the  lower ;  creates  it ;  governs  it ; 
endows  it ;  washes  its  feet ;  and  makes  the  artisan's 
life,  though  humble  yet  homely,  and  co-decent  with 
the  duke's. — In  recapitulation,  charity  consists  in 
ceasing  to  do  evil,  because  it  is  hateful  to  the  Lord, 
in  every  calling,  and  in  doing  sincerely,  justly  and 
faithfully  in  the  same;  this  is  helping  the  human 
race.  Therefore  in  the  administration  of  acquired 
wealth  for  deserving  objects ;  that  is,  for  all  who 
help  themselves,  and  who  are  the  industrious  and 
solvent  community.  Also  in  occasional  almsgiving 
as  a  part  of  that  administration.  In  this  nation  it 
also  consists  very  mainly  in  cultivating  political 
wisdom,  and  superintending  the  outgoings  of  the 
State,  now  amounting  to  seventy-eight  millions 
a  year,  all  expended  in  keeping  up  the  status  quo. 


538 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTAZny, 


LOVE  AND  LMMORTALITY. 


539 


CXXVI. 


LOVE    AND    IMMORTALITY. 


Human    affections    are   re-born   when   they   are 
assured  of  a  future  hfe  and  an  immortal  freehold ; 
they  are  under  regeneration  when  they  even  aspire 
to  a  perpetual  estate.     The  New  Church,  which  has 
open  experimental  knowledge  that  character  survives 
death,  pours  heavenly  fire  into  the  vessels  of  the 
natural  heart  when  these  are  willing  to  receive  it. 
There  is  not  a  love  that  man  has  but  must  be  totally 
changed  by  a  firm  reasonable  faith  that  it  has  an 
endless  career  before  it ;  and  that  the  further  stages 
of  that  career  are  consequences  of  the  fidelity  of  the 
earlier  stages.     A  man  will  work  at  his  affections, 
to   improve  them,    if  he  knows   that  they  are  his 
affections  forever,  in  a  very  different   sense  to  his 
occupation  with  them  if  they  are  held  as  temporary 
things  or  tenements,  and  if  he  is  to  quit  them  at 
death.     And  if  he  has  only  a  vague  faith  that  it 
will  be  all  right,  and  that  he  will  be  faithful  as  if  his 
immortahty  were   certain,   his   hypothetical   action 
cannot  be  the  same  as  the  action  from  a  recognized 
certainty.     Hence  the  knowledge  of  the  immortality 
of  love  now  given  to  mankind,  is  a  new  and  immortal 
nervous  system  in  every  virtue  ;  and  those  who  have 
it,  and  live  from  it,  are  more  alive  in  their  private 
and  public  determinations  than  other  men  can  be. 

There  is  no  need  to  carry  this  argument  far,  or  to 
illustrate  it  by  other  than  a  few  common  examples. 
The  assurance  of  immortality,  the  definite  knowledge 
of  it,  enters  friendship  in  all  its  wide  relations ;  and 


is  like  a  sweet  conscience  in  them  all,  making  them 
worthy  and  warm.  So  far  as  the  friendship  is  true, 
it  founds  something  that  cannot  pass  away  :  meet- 
ings on  a  common  ground  whenever  the  heart 
requires  them.  The  friends  may  be  in  distant 
spheres,  to  speak  reverently  in  distant  heavens,  and 
their  forms  unknown  to  each  other  for  the  most 
part ;  but  a  basis  of  recognition  has  been  founded  on 
earth,  and  they  can  be  known  to  each  other  in  that 
when  the.  desire  arises,  simply  on  the  principle  that 
friendship  is  immortal,  and  the  divine  constitution 
of  the  spiritual  world  endorses  its  desires. 

So  also  as  love  is  permanent,  and  the  sexes  un- 
dying, the  accurate  knowledge  of  this  enters  the 
greatest  affection  of  nature,  and  feeds  it  with  con- 
stancy ;  and  with  hope,  courage  and  joy.  Whatever 
is  true  gold  in  it  here,  is  committed  to  rational  faith, 
and  purified  for  an  immortal  continuance  :  whatever 
is  provisional,  is  faithfully  kept,  and  ministers  its 
best  of  service  on  the  journey  of  life.  In  all  cases 
it  is  a  sacred  trust,  because  it  is  of  the  life  of  life. 
Containing  these  grounds,  conjugial  love  must  be 
absolutely  different  from  that  love  which  contains 
only  the  body  and  the  flesh  :  for  it  lives  in  the 
spiritual  body  which  has  every  part  transcendently 
in  it;  and  does  not  ascend  from  below,  but  descends 
from'  above  with  its  fulness  and  its  power  into  the 
mortal  pair ;  being  humanly  and  extremely  organic, 
but  organic  from  heaven. 

And  likewise  the  love  of  country,  patriotism,  is 
aggrandized  and  fired  whenever  a  man  believes  the 
fact,  that  his  country  is  permanent,  and  its  good 
given  to  his  heart  for  ever.  Swedenborg  says, 
*'  Those  who  love  their  country  in  the  world,  when 
they  die,  love  heaven,  which  is  then  their  country." 


i 


540 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY, 


THE  SEXES, 


This  IS   the  immortality  of  patriotism.     And  this 
faith,  poured  into  the  patriot  hearts  of  this  world, 
gives  an  immortal  interest  to  the  native  land,  as  the 
nursery  of  good  men  and  women  for  ever.     Such 
patriotism  must  be  different  from  that  which  has  no 
faith  in  an  upper  England  reaching  even  into  the 
heavens  ;  the  England  of  the  graves  of  our  ancestors, 
venerable  and  sacred  to  us  though  it  be,  is  a  meaner 
country  than  the  England  here  and  hereafter  of  our 
spirits ;  the  land  of  past  history  and  dying  genera- 
tions   is    altogether    unlike    the    fatheriand   of    a 
perpetual  present,  into  which  birth  for  ever  comes, 
but   from   which    death   is   banished   by  the  clear 
penetration  of  rational  religious  sight. 

In  one  more  illustration,  the  relations  of  parents 
and   children,   family  love,   are  new  for  the  New 
Church,  because  children  can  now  be  taught  what- 
ever is  needful  of  life  and  death ;  things  hitherto 
concealed ;  they  can  know  that  life  is  definitely  con- 
tinued, and  that  in  every  duty  and  lesson  they  are 
being  prepared  not  only  for  an  earthly  but  also  for  a 
heavenly   home.     This  can  now  be  done   without 
parrying  the  searching  questions  of  the  child's  heart 
He  can  learn  that  if  he  dies,  he  will  grow  up  under 
angehc  tutorship  in  the  spiritual  worid,  and  know 
no  Father  but  God.      That  children  who  die  grow 
up  to  an  immortal  youth  ;  that  good  old  men  who 
die,  grow  back  to  the  same  youth ;  and  that  heaven 
IS  unfading  youth,  because  true  love  and  life  are 
m   the   freshness   of  the   Lord's   eternal   morning 
Children  can  also  learn  early  that  earthly  parents 
are   provisional   ministers   for   them,  and  that  the 
Lord  IS  the  parent  even  here  ;  and  independence  be 
thus  founded  early  in  loving  obedience.      Education 
on  these  pnnciples  is  totally  different  to  the  rearing 


541 


of  children  either  where  there  is  no  religious  know- 
ledge in  the  parents,  or  where  the  knowledge  is 
vague,  and  the  grave  blocks  the  way  and  dims  the 
sight  of  the  little  enquirer. 

The  principles  of  materialism,  and  the  falses  and 
ignorance  of  the  old  religion,  confound  the  human 
affections,  cut  off  their  spiritual  heads,  and  leave 
only  their  natural  heads  extant ;  truncating  marriage 
and  infancy  especially:  the  new  revelation  opens 
life,  and  the  friendship  and  love  and  youth  and 
patriotism  of  the  heavens  descend  into  its  relations, 
reconstitute  them,  and  furnish  the  beginnings  of  a 
new  and  imperishable  age. 


CXXVII. 


THE    SEXES. 


Swedenborg  has  written  a  book  on  Conjugial 
Love  which  for  some  time  to  come  will  furnish 
anxious  ground  for  those  who  receive  his  commis- 
sion, and  easy  points  of  superficial  attack  to  those 
who  impugn  it.  In  the  first  place,  he  has  elevated 
the  subject  as  no  other  writer  has  done,  showing 
that  conjugial  love  descends  from  the  Lord  through 
the  heavens,  where  it  subsists  in  everlasting  fervour 
and  purity,  its  births  there  being  inward  additions 
of  good  in  the  heart  and  truth  in  the  mind,  whereby 
heaven  is  internally  prolific  of  life,  and  advancing  in 
power.  From  thence  this  love  descends  to  men  and 
women  on  earth,  and  where  it  is  received,  it  is  a  pure 
affection,  pure  to  its  very  end  and  resting  place  in 
the  body ;  pure,  but  full ;  and  coming  from  above, 
charged   with   every  immortal   motive ;   altogether 


542 


THE  SEXES, 


different  from  any  animals  love,  which  is  single  to 
this  world,  and  born  through  the  senses  from  with- 
out. No  writer  has  stated  this  before  ;  none  could 
state  it ;  because  it  is  an  experimental  rational 
revelation  from  heaven,  where  conjugial  love  is 
fundamental. 

Below  this  serenity  of  doctrine  and  experience, 
lies  the  whole  realm  of  corrupt  loves  and  disorderly 
relations    upon   earth.       Swedenborg    has   trodden 
here  also ;  and  while  denouncing  adultery  of  purpose 
as  among  grievous  sins  which  shut  heaven  against 
the  doer,  he  has  drawn  up  a  scale  of  incompatibilities 
under  the  influence  of  which  it  is  impossible  for  the 
married  to  live  together  with  any  prospect  of  love, 
or  of  peace  ;  incompatibilities  by  which  marriage,  or 
the  union  of  two  persons  in  one,  is  practically  voided. 
In  the  direction  of  separations,  he  has  done  nothing 
more  than  give  sanction  to  all  the   causes  which 
make  conjunction  impossible  ;  whereas  our  divorce 
courts  at  present  entertain  those   only  which   are 
crimes  against  the  person,  or  nullities  of  the  person, 
and  which  are  the  gravest  demonstrations  of  incom- 
patibility.     And  therefore  it  may  be  said  that  he 
has  but  preceded  the  law  of  England,  which  has 
constituted  the  present  divorce  courts  since  he  wrote, 
and   which   is   gradually  and  inevitably  advancing 
upon  the  path  which  he  has  marked  out. 

But  again,  all  real  causes  of  separation  acting  on 
men  and  women,  constituted  as  they  are  by  the 
Creator  mentally  and  organically,  are  also,  he  de- 
clares, "legitimate,  just  and  conscientious  causes  of 
concubinage ;"  that  is,  where  marriage  cannot  be 
entered  again  by  the  separated  parties;  and  this 
cannot  be  in  the  Christian  religion  on  any  mere 
ground  of  incompatibility,  but  only  in  the  case  of 


THE  SEXES. 


543 


adultery.  Here  he  outgoes  the  work  of  English 
law  ;  which  may  sanction  the  separation  ;  but  has 
at  present  nothing  to  say  to  the  life  of  the  parties 
afterwards  in  regard  to  unions  which  cannot  amount 
to  marriage,  and  which  the  present  law  practically 
creates,  and  ignores. 

Every  one  knows  that  these  unions  are  numerous  ; 
and  also  that  they  are  often  disgraceful.  But 
Swedenborg  does  not  let  the  matter  rest  here ;  but 
has  stated  that  where  such  unions  exist,  they  must 
be  separated  from  conjugial  love  ;  that  a  double 
cohabitation  is  damnable ;  and  he  has  uttered  the 
note  of  their  regeneration,  in  the  principle,  that  if 
they  are  faithfully  kept  to,  conjugial  love  may  be 
preserved  in  them  and  by  them;  and  that  if  it 
manifestly  springs  up  in  their  path,  the  pair  are 
bound  to  marry  if  opportunity  occurs. 

The  subject  is  a  difficult  one,  because  prejudice 
and  attack  are  sure  to  come  of  it ;  but  it  must  be 
considered;  and  it  presses  at  this  moment  upon 
every  civilized  nation.  And  just  because  the  prin- 
ciple adduced  above  is  not  accepted,  all  relations  but 
that  of  marriage  are  trodden  into  one  common  mire 
of  disrespect,  and  the  Government  tends  to  hand 
them  to  its  direful  sexual  police,  and  to  feed  its 
soldiers  with  their  offal.  And  on  the  other  hand,  for 
want  of  practical  light  on  these  questions,  the  noble 
agitation  which  is  now  going  on  against  State-prosti- 
tution, lacks  basis  and  power,  and  wastes  indignation 
in  collateral  sentiments  and  moral  apothegms,  instead 
of  recognizing  the  whole  case,  and  pleading  it  sub- 
stantially before  the  Church  and  the  public. 

To  the  New  Church  the  writer  would  say,  this 
Conjugial  Love  is  a  pure  book,  tending  to  good  every 
way ;  harmonious  with  the  Word  of  God ;  rescuing 


544 


THE  SEXES, 


THE  SEXES. 


545 


I? 


i\ 
I 


the  dearest  of  all  the  affections  from  carnality  and 
decay;  and  based  in  its  lower  parts,  which  it  in- 
evitably has,  on  the  present  necessities  of  human 
beings,  which  it  is  useless  to  ignore,  and  impossible 
to  deny;   and  into  which  necessities  it  introduces 
the  germs  of  potent  principles  of  good  which  will 
lead  to  their  provisional  regeneration,  and  to  the 
ultimate  cure  of  the  state  which  produced  them. 
This  book  was   first  translated   by  the   Rev.   Mr. 
Clowes,  one  of  the  purest  of  men.     To  opponents 
the  writer  would  say,  read  the  book  carefully ;  put 
fanaticism    aside,   and    grapple    with    the    subject 
practically;  and  see  if  you  can  supply  any  other 
social  solution  of  these  questions  than  that  which 
Swedenborg  sanctions  and  proposes,  and  for  which 
the  honest  mind  of  the  world  will  devoutly  thank 
him  in  time. 

There  is  one  principle  recognized  by  Swedenborg, 
and  often  forgotten  in  these  questions  ;  namely,  the 
passivity  of  woman  as  a  determinant  power.     It  is 
her  very  nature,  and  all  her  mighty  influence  lies 
that  way.     Thereby,  what  she  will  not  do,  she  forces 
man  to  do  for  her  :  e.g.,  she  will  not  court,  or  pro- 
pose marriage  ;  and  therefore  man  must  do  both. 
Carry  this  forward  into   her  whole  character  and 
relations,  and  it  is  seen  at  once  that  male  initiation 
does  not  mean  male  tyranny,  even  in  such  matters 
as  separation  and  divorce  :  it  is  simply  male  neces- 
sity ;  in  order  that  woman  may  be  emancipated  into 
her  own  passive,  reactive,  attractive,  and  thus  com- 
manding  life.      The   thing   to   be   altered   is,   the 
addition  of  the  State  to  this  passivity,  making  it 
compulsory  ;  in  which  case  opposition  and  repulsion 
come,  and  the  quality  is  healthily  passive  and  reactive 
no  longer.    Let  male  law  be  lifted  oiff,  as  a  burden  and 


a  shame,  and  woman  be  left  to  her  proper  self- 
determination  ;  to  be  as  much  like  a  man,  or  as 
little  like  a  man,  as  she  pleases ;  to  vote,  propose 
marriage,  administer  property,  and  the  like  ;  and 
her  quality  will  right  itself,  because  her  experi- 
mental instruction  about  her  place  can  then  begin. 

Hence  if  a  scale  of  causes  of  separation  be  given 
on  the  male  side,  it  inevitably  applies  also  to  woman 
on  her  side, — the  pressure  of  the  State  being  taken 
off* :  and  if  her  greater  constancy  and  adhesiveness 
forbid  her  to  plead  the  causes  as  the  man  will  do, 
that  force  will  go  into  the  balance,  and  modify  the 
apparent  liberty  of  the  man  ;  so  as  to  produce  a 
result  of  consent  and  even-handed  justice  in  the 
domestic  tribunal.  In  other  words,  the  woman 
will  have  her  way  in  it  all  co-ordinately  with  the 
man. 

To  recapitulate.  All  causes  of  separation  at  a 
certain  age  are  inevitably  causes  either  of  concu- 
binage, or  of  prostitution.  The  British  Government, 
for  the  army  and  navy,  adjudges  them  to  be  causes 
of  prostitution,  and  provides  accordingly.  Sweden- 
borg accepts  the  fact  of  concubinage,  not  making  it, 
but  finding  it ;  and  places  within  it  and  above  it  a 
reliofious  conscience  drivinof  it  marriaf^e-ward,  and 
heaven-ward.  This  is  a  solution  worthy  of  the 
church.  The  noble  men  and  women  who  are 
engaged  upon  the  question  should  read  his  work 
on  Conjugial  Love.  At  present  they  **  go  to  battle, 
not  to  war."  It  will  help  them  to  the  greater  issue 
where  victory  for  purity  may  be  gained,  and  after- 
wards be  secure. 


\ 


2  M 


540 


THE  BRITISH  CONSTITUTION. 


THE  BRITISH  CONSTITUTION. 


S47 


CXXVIII. 


THE    BRITISH    CONSTITUTION. 


"The  king  can  do  no  wrong"  is  a  maxim  that 
cannot  be  held  if  the  constitution  of  the  kingdom 
is  to  derive  its  sanction  from  a  spiritual  source.  No 
person  in  the  realm  can  be  so  mulcted  of  faculty  as 
not  to  be  able  to  do  right  and  wrong.  There  is 
no  sane  man  or  woman  to  wliom  the  position  of  a 
figmentary  absence  of  freewill  is  not  unjust.  There 
is  no  function,  public  or  private,  menial  or  royal, 
that  does  not  involve  the  possibility  of  filling  it 
well,  or  amiss ;  and  taking  the  personal  respon- 
sibility. 

The  truths  of  position  are  great  truths,  because 
they  are  with  the  beginnings  of  all  consequences ; 
and  their  consequences  are  mighty,  and  unexpected. 
Thoughtless  people  are  not  aware  of  their  existence. 
The  maxim  that  "  the  king  can  do  no  wrong "  is  a 
first-class  falsity  of  position. 

It  has  been  adopted  to  court  ease  and  to  save 
contest,  and  to  make  one  person  into  a  fixed  and 
safe  centre  for  the  whole  people ;  to  eliminate 
the  necessity  of  judging,  condemning,  and  supersed- 
ing in  royal  cases.  It  would  answer  none  of  these 
ends  if  any  great  stress  came.  Nor  if  a  powerful 
and  active  genius  were  on  the  throne,  could  any 
human  force,  still  less  a  confessed  figment,  keep  him 
out  of  the  arena  of  determined  right  and  wrong. 
He  would  be  his  own  prime  minister,  at  first 
powerfully ;  and  afterwards  easily,  by  the  acclaim 
of  lord  mayors  and  of  a  willing  people. 


But  the  evil  lies  the  other  way ;  and  it  empties 
the  first  position  and  the  most  fortunate  benevolence 
in  the  land  of  individuality  and  freedom.     This  is 
an  injustice  to  the  royal  person,  and  to  the  throne 
itself;  it  would  be  alike  injustice  if  the  unmanmng 
were  done  on  a  republican  president.     1.  It  injures 
the  character  of  the  person  who  wears  the  crown^ 
2    It  destroys   his   capacity  for  active  good ;    and 
makes   him   into   an    automatic   and   uninteresting 
benefactor.     3.  It  destroys  the  initiative  of  good 
which  belongs  to  the  highest  position,  and  which 
would  otherwise  have  the  aspirations  and  genius  ot 
the  position  on  its  side.     4.  It  makes  the  sovereign 
into  an  anomaly  ;  and  takes  away  from  him  capacity 
of    full   association   with   any   other  human  being 
outside   the   anomalous  family.      In  this  way  the 
position  hurts  the  fountain  of  friendship  and  inter- 
course in  the  country.     5.  It  despoils  the  springs 
of  honour,  for  a  soldier  who  can  never  be  in  battle, 
can   give   no   true   orders   away.      6.   It   demands 
acquiescence  from  the  king  in  all  that  he  sees  to  be 
mean  in  the  minister  and  the  estates,  and  forces 
him   to   endorse  without   public   remonstrance  the 
continuance  of  evils  which  he  perceives.     It  ousts 
the  force  of  reform  from  the  highest  seat  in  the  land. 
7    It  walks  the  king  about  as  a  marsupial  person 
in  the   pouch  of  the  minister,  who  may  perhaps 
represent  nothing  better  than  the  temporary  mean- 
ness of  his  country.     8.  If  the  nation  is  a  whole, 
this  position  in  the  long  run  will  impair  its  individu- 
alitv   will   make   expediency  more  common  than 
neces'sary;  will  radiate  indifference  from  the  court 
downwards ;  will  make  religious  convictions  in  the 
highest   rank   impossible    of   free    expression    and 
indeed  of  formation ;  and  give  a  preponderance  to 


''  I 


m 


548 


THE  BRITISH  CONSTITUTION, 


THE  BRITISH  CONSTITUTION, 


549 


dogmas  on  which  the  succession  depends ;  a  succes- 
sion of  royal  puppets.  Two  conclusions  are  meant 
to  be  drawn.  1.  The  carrying  out  of  this  figment 
in  the  present  facts  of  royalty,  deprives  the  nation  of 
the  will  of  its  sovereign,  and  the  sovereign  of  the 
nation  as  his  field ;  and  tlie  country  lacks  a  part  of 
its  wits  when  one  of  its  first  initiatives  is  in  leading 
strings ;  and  moreover  the  true  loyalty  is  absent, 
because  it  can  only  come  forth  from  subjects  to  a 
person  in  the  struggle,  not  in  the  easy-chair,  of  that 
exalted  life.  2.  The  figment  cannot  last;  and 
it  were  well  if  Parliament,  which  finds  time  to 
bestow  on  such  things,  would  allow  men  and 
women  to  sit  unpossessed  upon  the  throne  of  the 
realm ;  and  to  take  the  consequences  of  their  own 
acts. 

The  French  nation  has  an  organic  percipiency  of 
the  facts  though  not  of  the  truths  of  position,  and  that 
has  made  them  so  often  uneasily  change  forms  in  the 
vain  hope  of  getting  rid  of  the  necessity  of  regenera- 
tion. We  as  a  nation  are  deficient  in  this  perception, 
and  accept  compromises  and  small  expedients  as 
substitutes  for  its  exactions. 

The  functions  of  the  sovereign  require  to  be 
discovered  by  experiment  ^ and  time,  for  under  the 
paralyzing  dogma  that  ''the  king  can  do  no  wrong," 
they  are  non-extant,  and  unknown ;  but  this  does 
not  concern  the  present  argument,  which  simply 
contends  that  the  king  can  do  both  right  and  wrong, 
and  be  responsible  for  both ;  but  does  not  attempt 
to  foretell  the  details  of  royal  duties.  The  duties 
will  expand  as  the  freewill  is  felt,  and  recognized- 
But  a  small  instance  may  be  given  in  reo*ard  to 
private  royal  disbursements;  an  instance  of 
great  pregnancy,  and  capable   of  much  extension. 


We  will  take  the  fact  of  royal  almsgiving  ;  and  say 
that  the  sovereign  has  right  and  duty  to  give  to  no 
hospital  in  which,  or  by  the  officers  of  which,  viola- 
tionism   is    carried  on:  that   thus  he   has  a  right 
to  be  a  lather  to  the  humanity  of  his  country  ;  and 
to  be   the   guardian    and    sanctuary  of  its   animal 
life ;  to  set  his  face,  and  write  his  protest,  agamst 
elephant  shooting  all  through  his  dominions ;  and 
to  supervize  every  sport  by  the  force  of  his  declared 
opinions;   marking    with    royal   displeasure   misde- 
meanants   against   the   laws    of  common  kmdness. 
Further  that  he  has  a  right,  as  head  of  the  church 
to  summon  his   bishops,  priests   and  deacons,  and 
his   ministers    of    all    denominations,   into    session 
ao-ainst  these  things,  and  to  preside  wherever  he 
pleases  in  any  such  convocation ;  no  prime  minister 
hindering.     This   one  instance  will   show  how  Her 
Majesty^    functions    may   extend;    and   how   her 
life    curtailed   and  ceremonial   now,  may  grow   m 
substance  and  in  power,  until  she  is  no  anomaly  or 
ministerial  automaton,  but  the  third  estate   of  the 
realm  ;  or  the  first  estate  as  the  case  may  be.  ^ 

For' lack  of  such  interesting  functions,  the  highest 
place  in  the  land  is  insipid  in  its  acts  and  conse- 
quences ;  and  appeals  slenderly  to  the  hearts  of  men  ; 
whereas  the  royalty  of  England,  through  the 
regeneration  of  its  person,  ought  clearly  to  mark 
an'd  abet  the  advancing  providence  of  heaven,  and 
to  encourage  national  enthusiasm  for  its  pleas. 

This  means  that  the  sovereign,  as  head  of  the 
State,  shall  not  cease  to  be  the  active  and  inde- 
pendent citizen  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  with  functions 
of  freewill  and  freedom  ;  her  prerogatives  advancing 
as  the  nation  advances. 

The  present  position  is  a  kind  of  Grand  Llamaism, 


i 


ul 


550 


THE  BRITISH  CONSTITUTION, 


DUCAL  SAMARAS, 


551 


and  it  is  a  point  of  influence  that  has  many- 
co-ordinates,  producing  by  reflex  action  far  and  wide 
a  languor  and  palsy  in  the  country.  Connected 
with  it,  and  keeping  it  up,  is  the  relation  of  the 
nation  to  Parliament,  the  nation  being  a  perpetual 
minor  of  whom  Parliament  is  the  chancery  and  the 
trustee.  This  state  is  increasing  yearly,  and  Parlia- 
ment is  choked  by  the  magnitude  of  the  trustee- 
ship. The  nation  also  like  the  queen  can  do  no 
wrong  if  it  only  submits  quietly  to  Parliament. 
The  cure  for  this  is  in  local  parliaments,  in  inde- 
pendent federated  municipalities,  which  will  do 
local  work;  in  short,  in  home  rule  in  all  matters 
that  belong  to  home  and  locality. 

The  effect  will  be,  to  settle  all  great  questions  in 
portions  of  the  country,  and  gradually  to  win  over 
the    whole    land     to     the     right     side,   producing 
exemplars  to  be  followed  ;    and  working    by    safe 
small  social  experimentation.     This  will  develop  the 
mind  of  the  country,  where  the  general  Parliament 
stifles  it.     And  if  by  the  localization   certain  evils 
and  their  abettors  are  driven  out  of  some  districts, 
and  into  others,  those  evils  will  thus  be  concentrated, 
their  resorts  be  known,  and  public  opinion  will  get 
at   them,   as  a  policeman's  lantern  at  a  man  in  a 
corner.     If  the  vivisectors  for  instance  were  driven 
over  the  borders  of  municipality  after  municipality, 
by  a  constant  pursuance  of  laws,  tlie  places  rid  of 
them  would  be  purified,  and  they  would  soon  quit 
the  land  for  Paris  or  Florence. 


CXXTX. 


DUCAL    SAHARAS. 


The  spiritual  and  invisible  influences  which  cor- 
respond to  deserts  and  produce  them  in  nature,  find 
their  gross  counterparts  in  the  social  world,  m  the 
effects  produced  by  the  unchecked  greed  of  the  great 
proprietors  of  the  country.     Districts  are  laid  waste 
of  inhabitants,  and  deprived  of  cultivation,  in  order 
to  breed  grouse  and  other  game  for  the  purposes  ot 
lordship  and  its  amusement.     Human  oases  m  such 
tracts  are  as  far  as  possible  destroyed.     This  is  a 
creation  of  political  and  social  saharas.    Nor  are  the 
dukes,  the   duces  whether   titular  or  not,   content 
with  open  deserts,  but  the  great  free  moorlands  of 
England  are  becoming  walled  deserts,  with  man-traps 
and  sprino--guns  threatened  over  against  strong  iron 
gates.     The  notion  of  property  is  strained  to  the 
utmost,  and  selfishness  pleads  ^'  thine  and  mine     to 
the  fact  of  desolation.   This  may  be  noticed  in  Derby- 
shire at  the  gates  of  Chatsworth,  where  two  great 
leaders  lead  thus  by  their  educational  example.     Ihe 
isolated  moorlands  are  become  the  visible  mountains 
of  the  ducal  selfhoods.     In   the    meantime,  great 
towns    are    in    the    neighbourhood;    great    grimy 
towns;    and    their    populations    are    forbidden    to 
wander   over  the  kidnapped    hills.      It  would   be 
more  ducal  if  the  people  of  those  towns  were  sum- 
moned  forth  on  their  holidays  by  the  dukes  to  enjoy 
the  heather  and  the  breezes,  to  plant  forests,  and  as 
rural  industrial  armies  to  execute  whatever  schemes 
of  cultivation  are  for  the  good  of  the  whole  country. 


i 


55^ 


DUCAL  SA HARAS. 


The  law  of  common  kindness  would  prescribe  that 
all    uncultivated    lands,   and    especially   hills   and 
mountains,  should  be  held  for  the  people  as  one  con- 
tinuous   footpath.       The    absence   of    any    church 
which  is  not  in  complicity  with  the  love  of  self  and 
the  love  of  the  world,  is  proclaimed  by  the  main- 
tenance  and    extension    of   such   appropriations   of 
nature  as  these,  by  the  eviction  of  the  nation  with- 
out remonstrance  from  its  own  places  of  health;  for 
if  a   great   clergy   such   as   we    possess    protested 
against    these    things    in    the    name   of    common 
righteousness  for  three   months,   there  is  no  force 
which  could  withstand  their  voice.     But  the  behef 
m  justification  by  faith  alone  carries  away  the  force 
and   lessons   of   the    Divine    Word   into    ecclesias- 
tical compliances,  and  leaves  the  natural  man  to  do 
what  he  likes  with  his  own.     The  result  is  desola- 
tion; and  the  church,  by  spiritual  defect,  presides 
over   the   wilderness,    and    is    the    gamekeeper   of 
gamekeepers.     A  church,  with  such  subjects,  would 
wall  in  the  sky  for  privileged  people,  if  such  a  thing 
were   possible;    nay,   does  wall  it  in  to  a  serious 
extent  in  large   towns.     It  never  tells  proprietors 
that  the  light  and  air  and  ground  of  the  world  are 
the  Lords;    that  they  are  for  administration;    first 
as  Godwealth,  second  as  commonwealth,  as  private 
wealth,  last.     ^^  Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to 
house,  that  lay  field  to  field,  till  there  be  no  place, 
that  they  may  be  placed  alone  in  the  midst  of  the 
earth!"    (Isa.  v.  8).      Now  let  the  reader  bear  in 
mind  that  these  things  are  natural  correspondences 
in    a   visible   realm   of    human   action,    of  greater 
cosmical  effects  produced  by  the  spiritual  world,  and 
specifically  by  the  hells,  which  with  all  their  selfhood, 
all  their  neglect  of  good  and  greed  of  evil  act  down 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS.        553 

into  the  plane  of  nature,  and  striking  it,  in  their 
arrest  of  force,  produce  by  correlation  deserts  on 
earth,  saharas,  with  their  poisonous  and  destructive 
inhabitants. 

cxxx. 


THE    NEW    CHURCH    OVER    POLITICS. 

The  New  Jerusalem  now,  and  for  some  time  to 
come,  will  be  eminently  a  political  state  ;  pleading 
o-reat    reforms,   and   abnegation  of  false    claims  ot 
property,  in  no  case  on  the  ground  of  radicalism,  or 
of  the  rights  of  man  ;  but  on  the  ground  of  righteous- 
ness,   th^e  rights  of  God.     This  can  be  effected,  if 
its   faithful  clergy  will,  purely  by  appeals  to  the 
private  religious  conscience;  and  public  agitation  ot 
dangerous  questions,  and  excitement,  may  be  thus 
forestopped   to    a   considerable    extent.       But    the 
pulpit,  and  the  ministrations  of  all  clergy  worthy  of 
the  name,  must  and  will  become  the  chief  agent  of 
social  and  political  regeneration.     For  this  reason, 
that  the  shunning  of  evils  as  sins  against  the  Lord, 
and  doing  the  good  things  opposite  to  those  evils,  is 
the  descent  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  and  is  the  con- 
stitution of  the  New  Church,  and  is  the  soul  and 
life    of  her   clergy,  whether   they   be    laymen,    or 
ecclesiastics.     No  lower  body  preaches  or  enforces 
righteousness ;  though  compromise,  policy  and  ex- 
pediency, will  still  have  their  advocates,  and  attest 
and  educate  till  the  higher  standard  is  admitted.     It 
is   therefore   greatly  to   be  desired  that  the  New 
Church  in  all  its  ministries  (and  every  member  of  it 
will  ultimately  be  a  priest)  should  diligently  apply 
itself  to  every  important  question  of  the  time,  and  m 


554        THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS, 

no  case  stand  apart  from  the  world's  arena  after  the 
manner   of  justification  by  faith  alone ;  but  come 
right  down  to  the  main  study  of  what  is  righteous  in 
each  relation.     This  it  alone  can  do,  because  it  alone 
receives  the  Word  of  the  one  Lord  as  applicable  to 
the  guidance  of  the  natural  life,  and  as  of  supreme 
weight  in   the   regeneration   of  the   natural   man  ; 
heaven,    by   reformations    of    character,    gradually 
produced  on  the  ground  of  earth,  being  the  sure  and 
only  way  to  heaven  above.     Our  age  is  full  of  proofs 
that  these  reformations,  always  individual  in  their 
origin,  are  widely  social,  and  are  political  and  inter- 
national,  in  their  extensions;  that  social,  political 
and  national  reform  reacts  upon  individual ;  and  that 
standing  always  on  the  ground  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty,  public  right,  traced  to  and  from  the  Lord  of 
all,  loyalty  to  Him  in  Himself  and  in  every  man,  is 
in  all  its  departments  the  daily  and  hourly  business 
of  the  Lord's  New  Church.      Man  has  to  regenerate 
the  world,  not  only  from  its  mental  atheisms,  cruelties 
and  indecencies,  but  from  its  disease,  pauperism  and 
crime;  from  its  imprisonment  in  greed  and  ambition  ; 
and  from   the   pestilences  and  wildernesses   of  its 
ground.     None  of  this  will  be  done  for  him  that  can 
be  done  by  him  ;  for  the  Lord,  by  redemption,  has 
only  given  him  freewill  again,  through  which  free- 
will the  Lord  acts ;  but  the  man  is  the  agent  of  all 
regeneration,    private  and   public.     And   the    New 
Church  is  the  supreme  voice  of  this  regeneration  in 
the  world. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  all  churches  preach 
this  in  so  far  as  they  insist  upon  a  good  life;  nor 
that  it  is  cardinally  insisted  upon  by  many  ministers 
of  religion.  But  it  comes  through  them  apart  from 
their  creed,  and  is  not  preached  as  a  means  of  salva- 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS,        555 

tlon ;    it  is  a  good  thing  to  be  done,  but  not  the 
essential  thing.     In  the  New  Church  the  life  is  all ; 
the  faithful,  honest  and  sincere  performance  of  the 
duties  of  the  day's  work ;  the  One  Divine  Human 
Lord,  through  the  man's  freewill  in  action,  does  that 
day's  work,Vdges  how  it  is  done,  and  apportions 
its  perfection  ;  and  by  the  application  of  His  Word, 
continually  strives  with  man  to  regenerate  the  work, 
filling  it  more  and  more  with  unselfish  uses  to  the 
neighbour.     The  true  happiness  of  life  is  given  away 
under  these  exact  conditions.     No  previous  church 
has  assumed  this  dominance ;  indeed,  the  churches, 
in  formal  articles,  give  up  the  theatre  of  daily  life 
as  a  hopeless  chaos  where  the  man  of  sin  divides 
empire  with  conscience.     The  New  Church  is  bound 
to  hold  to  the  contrary  aspiration ;  and  to  demand 
progressive  righteousness  of  public  and  private  life. 
Because  the  Lord,  no  tripersonal  being  doubtfully 
good  in  attributes,  and  no  unknown  being,  but  once 
our  brother,  Jesus  Christ,  commands  this  allegiance 
of  life,  fortune,  and  work ;  because  the  Word  com- 
mands it ;  because  it  regenerates  man,  and  society, 
in   the  doing  ;  administers  power  and  property  for 
the    Lord;    and   rehabilitates   the   individual,    the 
ground  on   which  he   stands,    and   the   states   and 
nations  of  the  earth. 

This  radiant  position,  this  sun  of  good  works, 
opened  down  upon  us  now  for  more  than  a  century, 
has  penetrated  the  social  world  far  beyond  the  New 
Church ;  it  is  the  descent  of  the  New  Jerusalem  of 
which  no  man  is  conscious  save  after  the  lapse  of 
time,  and  by  the  accumulation  of  results.  But  there 
it  is ;  and  the  new  humanity  which  is  in  the  world, 
and  which  is  constrained  to  recognize  the  kingdom  of 
love   and   use   as   essential,    despite   the   effort    of 


556         THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS, 

justification  by  faith  alone,  proceeds  purely  from  the 
Divine  Humanity,  which  was  the  triumph  in  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  over  all  practical  evil,  and  which 
is  the  sun  and  source  of  the  new  dispensation. 

It  is  difficult  to  state  these  things,  as  it  is  difficult 
to  see  the  apple  of  the  eye,  or  the  creative  power 
imparted  by  the  divine  mercy  to  the  creature. 
But  we  may  know  simply  that  a  true  doctrine  of 
God  given  by  Him  through  the  "Word,  and  then 
opened  to  mens  plain  understanding  in  the  com- 
missioned pages  of  Swedenborg,  brings  a  God  to 
bear  upon  our  affections  quite  different  to  the  unin- 
telligible or  vague  beings  who  have  hitherto  usurped 
that  name  in  the  human  mind.  The  divine  human 
God  known  as  our  Father  and  Friend,  the  workim^ 
God,    whose   works    are    first    creation,  and    then 

redemption,— those  divine  and  infinite  industries, 

must  inhabit  the  human  intellect  with  a  diflferent 
pressure  to  that  exercised  by  the  arbitrary  idols  of 
the  Catholic  and  Protestant  churches.  And  when 
the  question  is  as  to  our  conversion  into  the  image 
and  likeness  of  the  supreme,  a  diflferent  model  is  held 
up  to  us  as  worshippers  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
alone,  to  the  prototype  oflTered  by  the  trinitarian  and 
unitarian  theology.  And  when  the  further  question 
about  any  action  is,  Would  God  like  this?  the 
answer  can  come  full  and  direct  to  every  man's  busi- 
ness and  bosom,  when  the  Lord  Jesus  is  asked  ; 
whereas  when  a  trinity  of  persons  is  asked,  you  are 
in  a  theological  circumlocution  office,  which  refers 
you  to  clergy,  who  send  you  away  from  business  to 
church,  and  from  practical  administration  of  affairs 
for  God,  to  justification  by  faith  embodied  in  false 
creeds  and  articles.  And  even  the  unitarian  aspira- 
tion  after   supreme  justice,    excellently   human   in 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS.        557 

itself,  only  lands  you  in  your  own  best  common 
sense,  unhelped  of  revelation,  and  leaves  you  to  be 
your  own  model,  or  at  best  to  take  the  model  of 
Jesus  the  man,  not  the  model  and  opened  pressure 
of  Christ  the  Lord. 

Now,  if  a  new  face  of  God  is  given,  and  that  face 
turned  full  upon  the  natural  man;  if  He  Himself  is  a 
divine  man,  in  whom  perfection  of  justice  and  polity 
is  summed  up ;  if  His  coming  was  to  make  men  like- 
nesses of  Himself;  if  He  administered  the  divine 
fortune  of  His  omnipotence  by  spending  it  to  redeem 
the  world,  it  follows  that  the  church  which  receives 
and  represents  Him,  and  to  which  He  is  present 
accordingly,  has  the  regeneration  of  the  natural  man 
in  its  commission;  or  again  in  other  words,  is  an 
individual,  a  social,  a  political,  a  national,  and  an 
international  church. 

It  must  not  however  be  supposed  that  the  busi- 
ness of  that  churcli  lies  in  the  domain  of  party  con- 
flicts ;  or  that  it  will  add  itself  to  conservatism  or 
liberalism  as  the  churches  of  the  past  have  done  to 
their  own  injury.     It  will  be  a  voice  for  righteous- 
ness and  love,  an  influential  voice,  but  not  a  speaker, 
as  a  church,  upon  hustings  or  in  parliaments.     Its 
practical  nature  lies  in  its  limits  within  motives, 
tendencies,  and  the  good  affections  of  human  use  as 
a  ground  of  outward  action.    In  keeping  these  limits 
it  escapes  Utopian  schemes,  and  as  a  city  set  upon  a 
hill,  dwells  above  conflict,  at  the  same  time  that  it 
urges  incessant  experiment  for  good.    Whatever  the 
question  in  the  nation's  hand  may  be,  it  urges  right- 
eousness  and  unselfishness   as   the  beginning,  the 
means  and  the  test  of  the  solution.    It  follows  in  the 
wake  of  Him  who  says,  ''  Behold,  I  make  all  things 
new;"  and  the  initiative  it  employs  is,  What  the 


558         THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS, 

divine  man  will  adjudge  in  the  case  if  we  can  hear 
His  voice  personally.  No  matter  how  dull  the 
country,  or  how  dark  the  parliament,  this  new  direc- 
tion of  influx  is  pressed  upon  it,  almost  as  an  inward 
dictate,  and  awaits  God  s  time  to  become  a  force,  and 
by  the  conversion  of  chosen  men,  to  be  converted 
into  living  streams  of  power  and  irresistible  leader- 
ships. 

But  why,  it  may  again  be  asked,  cannot  this  in- 
fluence proceed  from  the  Old  Catholic  and  Protestant 
churches?     In  the  first  place,  it  has  not  proceeded 
from  them;  but  the  separation  of  the  church  from 
the  world,  of  ecclesiasticism  from  progress,  and  of 
current  religious  dogma  from  the  necessities  of  life, 
becomes  daily  more  apparent.     The  best  men  do 
their  natural  days'  work  without  ever  thinking  of 
the  church,  or  being  helped  by  it.     But  the  true 
reason  why  this  influx  does  not  come  from  the  old 
theology,  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  current  scheme  ol 
salvation  leaves  out  the  purification  of  the  natural 
man,  because  it  does  not  look  to  the  Lord,  but  to 
mythical  beings  beside  him.    The  Lord  on  earth  was 
a  working  man,  and  made  His  humanity  divine:  the 
Lord  as  a  model  accepted,  flows  into  us  with  this 
precise  force,  and  tends  to  make  all  who  receive  Him, 
working  men  and  women  in  the  likeness  of  Himself ; 
men  and  women  working  personally  to  regenerate 
their  own  human  nature,  with  the  knowledo^e  and 
faith  from  Him  that  this  can  be  done,  and  must  be 
done.     There  is  no  position   like    this   in  the  old 
world, — the   immanence   of  Christ   upon    business, 
polity,  wealth,  power,  the  whole  affections  of  the  race. 
Of  course  Christians  tend  to  do  good  because  God 
loves  it,  and  to  shun  evil  because  He  abhors  it ;  but 
the  idea  of  God  is  so  imperfect  and  unreal,  that  His 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  POLITICS,        559- 

love  and  His  abhorrence  are  both  of  them  contra- 
dictory and  confused;  and  the  plan  of  salvation 
without  the  perfection  and  success  of  good  works, 
destroys  the  necessity  of  good  in  the  natural  man,  by 
finding  a  substitute  for  it  in  the  death  of  Christ. 
Now  He  died  to  make  natural  good  completely  pos- 
sible, as  it  is  absolutely  necessary,  for  all  men.  And 
the  New  Church  has  a  perfect  rational  doctrine  which 
shows  how  this  was  effected. 

If  we   recollect  that  first  principles   govern   all 
thino-s,  that  every  position  assumed  has  after  it  a  fate 
of  consequences,  it  will  be  obvious  that  the  position 
of  a  divine  humanity  inaugurates  a  New  Church, 
and  afterwards  a  new  society.     Let  it  further  be 
remembered  that  the  inmost  ideas  which  any  mind 
assumes  govern  all  that  is  outside  them,  and  tend  to 
modify  in  their  own  sense  every  circumstance  that 
touches  them;    and  that  when  those  inmost  ideas 
are  high  and  noble,  say  rather  revealed  and  divine, 
they  tend  to  regenerate  the  whole  man  beneath  them. 
Also  that  the  idea  of  God  is  the  ideal  of  the  human 
mind,  and  that  the  whole  character-  flows  invisibly 
but  surely  from  that  which  the  man  worships.     If 
we  sufficiently  cherish  these  mental  facts  it  will  be 
evident,  and  can  be  held  as  such  against  all  antag- 
onism, that  the  belief  in  Christ  as  the  One  God  to 
be  followed,  places  Him  in  the  way  of  doing  with 
the  whole  race  of  man  that  which  He  did  with  His 
assumed  human  nature  on  earth,  namely,  of  filling 
it  with  His  divinity,  so  that  He  shall  be  answered 
in  the  regeneration,  and  then  in  the  salvation  of  His 
creatures. 


I 


56o  THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  THE  PASSIONS, 


CXXXI. 


THE    NEW    CHURCH    OVER   THE    PASSIONS. 


Hence  the  New  Church  is  not  an  ascetic  church, 
and  does  not  permit  the  theological  suicide  of  the 
natural  mind  as  a  means  of  escape  from  painful  pre- 
sent duty,  and  painful  resistance  to  evil,  to  spiritual 
salvation.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  churcli  of  combat, 
and  enjoins  the  complete,  and  finally  happy  subjuo-a- 
tion,  of  tlie  body,  parts  and  passions,  of  the  unabol- 
ished natural  man.  The  spiritual  experience  of 
Swedenborg,  impossible  of  contradiction,  attests  that 
the  whole  of  the  aifections,  and  specially  the  life's 
love  of  which  they  are  the  cohorts,  are  necessities  of 
our  being,  and  are  immortal  in  their  inward  forms. 
We  carry  them  over  with  us  after  death;  or  rather 
they  correspond  accurately  to  greater  and  more 
powerful  loves  within  us,  which  carry  on  our  per- 
sonal natures  and  characters  acquired  on  earth,  into 
a  world  adequate,  nay,  created  for  their  play.  There 
is  therefore  no  such  thing  as  getting  rid  of  the  pas- 
sions in  the  natural  climax  of  life  here,  which  makes 
them  immortal ;  and  the  only  alternative  is,  to  sub- 
due them  here  in  the  highest  name,  and  to  render 
them  harmless  fires  under  rulinor  faculties  above 
them;  fires  needful  for  the  daily  and  hourly  heat  of 
the  outer  man  who  subsists  bodily  in  both  Avorlds. 
Christ  came  to  subdue  the  infernal  influx  under  which 
before  His  day  the  passions,  perverted  to  long  evil, 
were  swollen  into  monsters  too  big  and  too  strong  for 
man.  Since  He  came,  and  now  especially  since  His 
second  Advent,  the  affections  and  the  passions  are 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  THE  PASSIONS  561 

again  brought  within  human  control :  possession  has 
ceased,  and  the  will  is  freed;  and  with  this,  a  new 
responsibility  of  self-regeneration,  in  which  the  Lord 
is  always  acknowledged,  and  afterwards  known  as 
the  sole  agent,  presses  upon  the  race,  and  demands 
incessant  acts  of  combat  against  natural  evils,  in 
order  that  the  body  of  the  affections  may  be  rescued 
to  the  true  life  of  love. 

Here  again  is  the  necessity  for  Christ,  the  one 
Lord.     As  man  is  not  changed  by  death,  he  must 
be  changed  by  Life  itself,  or  he  will  remain  pre- 
dominantly natural,  and  unregenerated.     The  influx 
by  which  this  change  is  wrought  through  acts  of 
freewill,  comes  from  a  divine  human  being  who  in 
His  assumed  nature  has  experienced  and  supremely 
undero-one  the  change,  and  whose  face  as  a  Father 
and  Friend,  and  whose  voice  from  His  own  Word,  is 
visible,  and  audible,  to   the  struggling   combatant 
man,   with  a  divinely  regulated  influence   towards 
victory,   and   regeneration.      This   pressure   in   the 
mind,  unlike  that  of  the  three  persons  in  the  old 
Trinity,    descends    into   the   abysses  of  nature,   to 
triumph  and  to  save;    proclaims  that  victory  even 
unto  death  must  be  done  and  had,  and  that  ascent 
comes  afterwards  ;  and  that  it  is  an  ascent  then  of 
the  whole  nature,  senses,  passions,  and  affections  ; 
whereas   the   usual   scheme   of  salvation  does   not 
permit  descent  at  all;  it  denies  the  incarnation  of 
the  spiritual  man  ;  and  ascends  with  the  sinful  crea- 
ture to  an  invisible  and  unapproachable  God,  whose 
action  is  arbitrary,  and  His  influx  has  no  sympathy 
in  human  experience.    It  voids  the  Lord  and  Friend 
of  Life  for  a  scheme  of  scholasticism.    And  it  causes 
men  to  believe  that  all  that  they  know  of  themselves, 
all  the  pleasures  they  take  in  their  own  characters  and 

2  N 


562  THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  THE  PASSIONS. 


hearts,  can  be  put  aside,  and  still  something  remain 
to  be  saved  by  a  grace  in  which  both  reason  and 
mercy  are  uncertain. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  New  Church 
doctrine,  that  the  immortality  of  man  is  the  immor- 
tality of  all  his  faculties,  senses  and  desires,  in 
corresponding  forms,  the  alteration  only  rendering 
the  man  adequate  to  the  new  world  he  has  entered, 
is*  itself  a  powerful  motive  to  control  every  faculty 
in  the  interest  of  virtue  and  wisdom.  Also  to  revise 
all  habits  in  which  character  fixes  itself  with  power- 
ful direction.  Because  after  death  change  is  more 
difficult ;  and  greed,  and  lusts,  and  love  of  power, 
and  idleness  and  self-indulgence,  come  then  not  only 
into  their  triumph  over  the  man,  but  into  their 
judgment  in  the  man ;  and  compel  his  discipline  and 
his  lot.  And  the  question  is,  What  is  the  best  way 
to  efiect  these  reforms?  It  cannot  be  done  from 
self,  for  selfishness,  self-preservation  against  self- 
abnegation,  in  one  form  or  another,  is  the  ancestor 
or  parent  of  all  the  lusts  of  man  ;  it  can  only  be  done 
by  a  greater  than  self,  by  one  out  of  self,  by  one  who 
is  unselfish.  No  such  one  is  known  in  history,  or 
science,  or  speculation,  save  alone  the  Lord  Christ, 
and  He  is  only  so  known  to  those  who  acknowledge 
His  Divinity,  and  worship  Him. 

The  New  Church,  neither  Stoic,  nor  Epicurean, 
but  administrative  for  divine  order,  makes  amends 
against  the  philosophers  to  human  nature.  There  is 
no  affection,  passion,  or  sense,  in  its  purity,  which  it 
can  dispense  with  in  the  building  of  its  temple,  that 
is  to  say,  in  the  New  Jerusalem.  There  is  nothing 
despicable  in  the  first  springs  of  human  action.  The 
love  of  wealth,  which  with  iron  hand  of  contract 
gripes  the  present  world  into  poverty,  is  a  heavenly 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  THE  PASSIONS.  563 

affection  when  regenerated,  and  through  its  admin- 
istrations   of  use   will  pour    the   affluence   of   the 
almighty.     Take  it  away,  and  the  commerce  of  the 
skies  would  cease.      The  love  of  power,  which  at 
present  crushes  the  subject  world  into  weakness,  is 
a  supremely  heavenly  love  in  the  ambition  to  have 
power  to  use  it  for  the  Lord ;  and  if  it  were  re- 
moved,  all  conscious  divine  order,  depending  upon 
governance,  and  all  beginnings  of  new  order  beyond 
the  present  vision  and  range  of  angels  and  men,  all 
leadership,  and  with  it  all  delightful  and  yet  awful 
sense  of  the  divine  government,  must  come  to   an 
end.      Mediocrity   mean   beyond   the   name  would 
creep  over  the  human  race,   if  ambition  for  good, 
and  love  of  power  for  good,  were  subtracted  from 
the  factors  of  society  either  in  this  world,  or  the 
next.     So  too  the  love  of  pleasure  in  its  manifold 
natures.     If  it  were  taken  away  from  one  outgoing 
avenue  of  sense   or  feeling,  or  desire,  the  current 
momentaneous  motive  of  life  would  stop,  and  the 
wheels   of  action   be   without   notice   to  the  man. 
Even  pain  preaches  this,  for  it  is  a  motive  to  ease, 
and  ease  moves  onward  to  activity  through  delight. 
The  sense  of  pleasure  is  therefore'  an  ultimate  gift 
which  leads  all  life  outwards  and  downwards  to  its 
proper  issues,  provided  the  summum  bonum  opens 
down  into  it,   regenerates  it,  and  claims  it  for  its 
own.     The  conjugial  sense,  the  delights  of  love  and 
wedlock,    of  union   with   another   being   fitted   by 
creation  to  your  own  being,  as  it  is  one  of  the  main 
stabilities  and  sources  of  the  race  of  man,  so  it  is  a 
fundamental  and  everlasting  fact  in  the  outgoings  of 
the  New  Jerusalem,  and  like  all  that  is  real,  subsists 
in   the   spiritual  world  with   a   plenitude   of  love, 
fitness,  enjoyment,  and  completion  of  character  and 


564   THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  THE  PASSIONS. 

godliness,  beyond  what  is  possible  in  the  world  of 
nature.  In  the  bridal  of  the  Lord  with  the  human 
race,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  New  Jerusalem,  all  true 
bridals  receive  their  consummation,  and  have  become 
eternal  in  the  heavens. 

Yet   has   the   scepticism   of   mankind   not   been 
without  a  justification  both  on  the  negative  side,  and 
the  positive.     As  we  have  said  before  in  almost  the 
same  words,  there  is  no  God  like  that  which  the 
atheists  deny ;  there  is  no  Lord  like  Him  whom  the 
current  Christian  beliefs  affirm.     There  is  no  anima 
mundi  of  space,  and  no  arbitrary  master  or  fatal 
force  over  the  universe.     There  is  no  spiritual  world 
such  as  philosophy  hitherto  affirms  or  denies;  no 
abstraction  serving  for  such  a  world :  and  no  space 
holding  one.     There  is  no  worldly  love  of  power  in 
the  higher  life,  but  a  heavenly  love  of  power.     Nay, 
there  are  no  natural  faculties  after  death  ending  in 
the  realms  of  space  and  time,  but  spiritual  faculties 
corresponding,  which  end  in  substantial  and  endur- 
ing realms  of  states.     There  is  no  earthly  love  of 
wealth  in  the  heavens,  yet  an  indispensable  grand 
economy  and  love  of  property  as  a  form  for  the 
purpose  of  serving  others.     The  love  of  that  service 
determines  the  fortune  and  administers  it,  and  is 
the  gold  in  the  gold.     There  is  no  natural  love  of 
pleasures  of  sense  in  the  houses  and  gardens  and 
scenes   and   persons    of    the    magnificent   spiritual 
world,  but  a  love  and  delight  in  the   inner   per- 
sonality of  these  things,  in  what  they  are  and  mean 
in  the  Lord.     And  there  is  no  sexual  love  proceed- 
ing from  without  to  within  in  the  life  above ;  there 
are  no  marriages  in  heaven  from  outward  grounds ; 
say  rather,  they  do  not  marry  and  are  not  given  in 
marriage,  but  are  as  the  angels  in  heaven.     That  is 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  THE  PASSIONS.      565 

to  say,  being  fully  men  and  women,  they  are  angels 
or  *'  sent "  to  each  other  in  the  divine  order,  and  in 
no  less  a  bond;  their  marriages  are  not  made  by 
themselves,  or  their  societies ;  in  other  words  again, 
they  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage,  but 
are  as  the  angels.  The  denial  of  the  old  positions,  if 
it  had  a  good  motive,  is  pretty  exactly  true ;  those 
things  only  which  are  not  have  been  denied ;  and  as 
the  realities  which  they  covered  could  not  be  re- 
vealed hitherto,  the  tide  of  negation  seems  to  have 
swept  away  the  higher  spheres.  But  now  these  are 
given  in  rational  laws  and  statements  for  w^hat  they 
are;  they  cannot  be  denied;  they  cannot  be  in- 
volved in  matter,  space  and  time;  atheism,  ma- 
terialism, and  sensual  Christianism,  become  more 
and  more  remote  from  them,  and  more  fatuous  in 
combating  them ;  and  it  will  at  last  be  found  that 
they  occupy  with  no  rival  claimant  the  whole 
domain  of  the  inner  religious  man,  and  of  the  out- 
ward scientific  man  so  far  as  he  is  not  voluntarily 
closed  against  interior  things. 

This  plain  revelation  of  the  higher  world  given 
in  Swedenborg,  opens  its  polity,  ordinances  and 
practices  upon  the  lower  natural  world  which  we 
men  and  women  inhabit  here;  if  we  may  use  the 
language  of  the  day,  it  brings  us  in  communication 
with  the  public  opinion  of  the  heavens.  And  thus 
it  judges  our  earthly  doings,  private  and  public,  by 
the  now  known,  yea,  well  known  ways  of  doing 
things  there,  where  righteousness  is  the  rule.  This 
has  been  assured  from  the  beginning,  in  the  Word 
of  God,  which  confronts  the  world  with  an  all- 
perfect  judgment  and  justice.  But  the  Word  has 
been  buried  in  churches  false  to  their  mission;  and 
it  has  become  necessary  in  the  divine  providence  to 


566 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  PROPERTY. 


open  its  deeper  light,  and  also  to  exhibit  the  divine 
society  which  subsists  within  its  sphere  in  the 
heavenly  kingdom.  That  new  information  now 
knocks  with  a  continual  personal  presence,  even  the 
Lord's,  upon  the  thick  doors  of  legislation  and  habit, 
and  seeks  admission  to  modify  the  private  life,  the 
home,  the  citizen,  and  the  State.  The  ground  on 
which  it  stands  outside  every  door  and  habit,  is  first 
freewill,  and  then  civil  and  religious  liberty.  It 
pleads  as  a  free  voice  to  be  listened  to  by  those  who 
will.  It  addresses  itself  to  each  department  of  life. 
It  is  political  to  politics,  social  to  society,  new 
steward  and  administrator  to  fortune,  privilege  of 
duty  to  privilege  of  rank,  guardian  of  real  and 
loosener  of  false  marriage,  corrector  of  power,  and 
permanent  inheritor  in  inheritance.  The  reader 
sees  that  the  New  Church,  entrusted  with  the  code 
and  manners,  the  realized  and  acted  wisdom  and 
love  of  the  higher  country  where  the  Lord  is  the 
known  and  acknowledged  ruler,  must  be  in  con- 
tinual pleading  with  the  present  state,  and  have  its 
breast  close  up  to  every  law  that  passes  in  the 
government,  and  judge  it  for  good  or  for  evil  from 
the  highest  ground. 


CXXXII. 

THE    NEW    CHURCH    OVER    PROPERTY, 

Take  for  instance  the  question  of  inheritance  of 
property.  It  has  grown  up  as  it  stands  from  im- 
memorial usages,  and  one  great  greed  or  another,  of 
power  and  wealth  combined,  has  embodied  itself  in 
legislation,   and   worldly   privilege   been   added   to 


THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  PROPERTY.      567 

material   desire  :— lordship,    estate,    family,    primo- 
geniture, mystical  position  in  society  ;  the  right  in  a 
large  sense  to  do  what  you  like  with  your   own. 
Finally,  the  right  to  legislate  in  the  open  sense  of 
interests   which  are  lusts.     Or  the  inheritance  on 
the   other   side,    in   the    smaller   fortunes   perhaps, 
proceeds   on   the   principle    of  free   lust   from   the 
beginning ;  you  may  do  anything  with  your  money 
by  arbitrary  act;  and  justice  and  injustice  do  not 
apply  to  the  administration  of  what  belongs  only  to 
yourself.      You  may  marry  a  second  wife,  and  leave 
an   ample   fortune   away   from   sick    and    helpless 
daughters  by  a  first  wife,  to  a  cuckoo  family  which 
also  does  what  it  likes  with  its  own.     Or  you  may 
leave  daughters  a  poor  life  interest,  and  cause  their 
dole  to  revert  at  their  death  to  wealthy  male  relatives 
who  accept  the  wrong :  depriving  the  daughters  of 
fair  administration,  and  of  all  will  at  death.     These 
are  but  two  legal  and  permissible  cruel  evils  :  there 
are  as  many  genera  and  species  of  them  as  there  are 
men,  families,  and  social  states.     Now  the  point  is, 
that  the  Catholic  and  Protestant  churches  may  go  on 
in  ceremonial  splendour  and  social  preponderance  for 
thousands  of  years,  but  they  will  never  assail  any 
one  of  these  barbarities  so  long  as  the  perpetrators 
duly  go  to  church.     They  only  take  note  of  legal 
crimes,  because  they  have  no  communication  with 
heaven,  but  are  limited  and  imprisoned  within  exist- 
ing society.     On  the  other  hand,  the  New  Church, 
by   its   commission,   if  not    by    powerful    practice 
hitherto,  takes  note  of  wickedness  as  crime,  whether 
the  wickedness  is  legalized  and  institutionalized,  or 
no.     And  hence,  in  this  matter  of  inheritance  of 
property,  its  influence  and  its  voice  must  and  will  be 
heard,  apportioning  the  transmission  of  property  m 


568       THE  NEW  CHURCH  OVER  PROPERTY, 

some  cases  to  the  laws  of  heaven,  and  in  cases  like 
those  mentioned  above,  to  the  works  and  ways  of 
darkness. 

Here  it  must  be  said  also  that  the  heavenly  in- 
fluence of  the  New  Church  is  exerted  only  according 
to  practical  need.     For  example,  the  present  existence 
of  property  may  be  a  fact  which  will  pass  away  in  a 
higher  state.     Transmission  of  fortunes  in  families 
likewise  may  be  a  transitory  need,  to  give  place  to 
other  and  more  spiritual  administration  by  and  by. 
Mine  and  thine  may  be  but  convulsive  graspings  of 
a  timid  natural  man  who  will  be  regenerated  into  a 
more  open  hand.     But  in  the  ^meantime  the  New 
Church  is  educative,  as  well  as  a  proposer  of  practical 
things  ;  and  it  takes  things  as  they  are,  and  demands 
that  they  submit  themselves  to  justice  as  it  is  to  be 
understood  in  each   case.     By   this  means,  justice 
gets  at  things,  and  will  gradually  work  them  right. 
For  example,  no  human  being  dare  say  that  there  is 
justice  for  that  case  in  the  children   of  a   second 
marriage  turning  out  into  poverty  the  children  of  the 
first :  it  is  flagrant  and  disgraceful  wrong,  whatever 
ultimate  views  of  property  may  be  taken  :  the  men 
that  do  it  consciously,  however  rich  and  respectable 
it  makes  them,  are  scoundrels  on  the  way  to  demons. 
But  be  it  well  observed,  that  though  this  evil  is 
against  the  dictates  of  common  justice  and  kindness, 
the  New  Church  is  the  only  one  which  can  denounce 
it  as  a  sin  contrary  to  the  salvation   of  the   per- 
petrators,   without   shunning   which    the    way    to 
heaven   is   closed.      Other   churches  tolerate   such 
things,  and  lead  men  to  Christ  by  faith  alone,  not  by 
that  life  in  which  He  lives  in  the  man,  and  saves 
him.     The  New   Church   is   revealed   in   order   to 
oppose  these  and  other  practical  evils,  as  making 


SUMMARY. 


569 


salvation  unattainable.  It  is  clear  that  there  is  a 
new  power  toward  regeneration  in  this  light  of 
opened  heaven,  and  the  open  Word,  with  new  doc- 
trines of  righteousness,  turned  down  upon  the  natural 
man,  and  replenishing  his  ordinary  sense  of  justice 
with  its  mortal  reproof  and  its  immortal  fire. 

The  mathematicians  know,  and  the  subtle  scientists 
know,  and  every  bowman  and  marksman  knows, 
that  any  new  direction  of  line,  or  force,  any  higher 
source  of  it,  any  new  related  position,  modifies  the 
arrow  of  consequences  that  comes  forth.  Calculate 
therefore  the  issue  to  come  from  heaven  and  the 
Word  opened,  the  one  divine  man  revealed  in 
righteousness  as  Eedeemer ;  regeneration  from  evil 
by  each  man  himself  the  sole  way  of  life  ;  and  salva- 
tion the  divine  gift  afterwards.  The  question  is, 
Are  these  new  forces  ;  and  are  they  good  and  true  ? 
If  they  are,  the  world  and  what  is  within  it  is  their 
inheritance,  and  they  will  have  it. 


CXXXIII. 


SUMMARY. 


Again  remember,  however,  in  estimating  the 
problem,  that  these  are  forces,  not  words  or  subjects 
of  thought ;  and  that  as  the  upper  physical  world,  the 
sun  and  its  sphere,  and  the  atmospheres,  press  upon 
the  lower  physical  world,  so  do  the  bowed  and  opened 
heavens  press  upon  human  society  now,  and  press 
with  definite  ministries  of  good  in  the  hands  of 
appointed  ministers.  A  new  personal  world  from 
above,  in  the  name  of  the  personal  Lord,  addresses 
us  categorically,  and  summons  us  to  righteousness. 


570 


SUMMARY, 


The  New  Church  then,  descending  organically  and 
architectonically  from  the  Lord,  descending  into 
human  minds  by  evolution  of  great  ideas  from  the 
spiritual  and  celestial  Word,  descending  by  nearness 
of  the  personal  heavens  to  the  personal  earth,  de- 
scending by  waves  of  thought,  and  great  inventions 
of  art  and  science,  by  added  liberties  of  action  which 
increase  freewill  in  all  men, — this  New  Church  in 
its  influence  is  not  only  a  social  and  political  church, 
but  the  only  such  church  upon  earth.  As  gravita- 
tion in  its  theory  and  grasp  masters  the  physical 
world  which  belongs  to  it,  so  the  known  laws  of 
heaven  and  of  hell  stand  over  humanity,  and  refer 
to  themselves  its  phenomena.  They  stand  over 
ecclesiasticism,  and  judge  its  frivolity,  and  its  alie- 
nation from  natural  and  from  heavenly  life,  and  from 
the  life  of  life,  which  is  love.  They  stand  over  the 
law's  delay,  and  though  prescribing  no  details  of 
reform,  nor  teaching  any  man  or  senate  his  own 
business,  they  insist  upon  those  whom  it  concerns 
reforming  straightway  the  fountains  and  streams  of 
justice  and  judgment  in  the  land,  that  God's  truth 
may  run  in  them.  They  stand  over  medicine  and 
other  professions,  and  protest  against  the  despotism 
of  their  guilds,  and  the  closedness  of  their  corpora- 
tions against  heaven.  They  stand  over  the  lusts 
and  conceits,  and  the  armies,  of  glorious  nations. 
They  stand  over  the  lust  of  science  and  the  volup- 
tuousness of  art.  They  stand  over  the  poetry  which 
sings  when  the  world  is  burning.  They  protest 
against  these  things,  and  demand  their  abatement 
under  heaven.  On  the  other  hand  they  foster  w^hat- 
ever  is  good  and  true  and  oppressed,  and  bring  it 
forth,  and  plant  it  in  a  new  garden.  For  these 
revealed  laws,  attested  by  all  the  consciousness  of 


SUMMARY. 


571 


right,  and  the  history  of  consequences,  are  a  new 
and  warm  climate  wherein  trees  that  only  bore 
leaves  hitherto,  now  can  bear  blossoms,  and  yield 
fruit,  and  perpetuate  their  kind,  and  fill  the  earth ; 
these  trees  are  perceptions  of  right  and  conscience 
long  unnoticed,  but  ever  freshly  insinuated  out  of 
heaven,    and   longing   for   incarnation    in    practical 

good. 

This  New  Church  therefore  is  the  Holy  Catholic 
and  Apostolic  Church  universal ;  and  it  consists  on 
each  given  day  of  all  men,  women  and  children  in 
the  world  who  acknowledge  and  love  the  Lord  in 
His  Person  and  in  the  Word,  and  are  shunning  evils 
of  life,  private  on  the  smallest  scale,  and  public  on 
the  greatest  scale,  as  sins  against  Him ;  and  doing 
the  works  of  their  calling  actively,  industriously, 
honestly,  and  lovingly,  with  all  their  might,  howso- 
ever little  or  great,  howsoever  sick  or  well,  that 
might  may  be ;  intimately  owning  afterwards  that 
it  is  all  done  from  Him  and  belongs  to  Him.     This 
is  Swedenborgs  statement  and  business-account  of 
the  descent  of  the  new  Jerusalem.     It  is  plain  good 
sense,  the  lesson  of  the  Word,  the  miracle  of  miracles, 
and  excludes  human  parentage.      And  this  in  its 
constant  practical  w^orking  is  the  new  and  everlast- 
ing age. 


PAET  y. 


SUPPLEMENT. 


CXXXIV. 

THE    ROYAL   COMMISSION   ON   VIVISECTION. 

The  Report  of  the  Commission,  as  exhibited  iii  its 
Summary,  justifies  the  case  against  violationism 
which  has  been  brought  forward  in  this  book.  It 
diminishes  the  pretexts  for  these  practices  until 
their  points  are  invisible  to  human  common  sense  ; 
and  piles  up  the  record  of  misdeeds  until  they 
efface  thought  and  feeling,  after  defying  anticipation. 
It  shows  that  violationism  is  now  an  accepted  part 
not  only  of  a  medical  and  surgical,  but  of  a 
philosophical  education ;  and  that  a  laboratory,  a 
misozoic  chamber  against  living  creatures,  is  an 
appendage  to  the  library  and  the  study  table  of 
English  gentlemen.  It  marks  the  entrance  of 
''  Sodom  and  Egypt "  into  the  corridor  of  English 
schools,  through  scientific  treatises  which  have  the 
thing  within  them.  It  demonstrates  the  invasion 
of  England  by  the  worst  forms  of  continental 
abomination,  and  that  this  invasion  increases  year 
by  year. 


THE  ROYAL  COMMISSION  ON  VIVISECTION    573 

It  does  more  than  this.  It  tells  all  the  world 
that  violationism  has  entered  into  the  State,  and  is 
endowed  in  and  by  the  Privy  Council,  an  annual 
grant  of  £2000  being  made  for  scientific  ''  investi- 
gations in  aid  of  medicine,"  including  experiments 
on  living  animals.  These  experiments,  performed 
by  a  foreigner,  have  been  so  heinous,  that  they 
have  received  the  stigma  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
where  the  avowed  sentiments  of  the  doer  have  been 
pronounced  "  execrable."  The  medical  department 
of  the  Privy  Council,  the  body  from  which  issues 
the  vaccination  dogma  made  into  a  fiat  by  Parlia- 
ment, sends  forth  this  new  and  kindred  evil ;  and  is, 
in  material  fact,  on  scientific  pretences,  the  general 
pollutional  department  of  the  State. 

The  whole  country,  so  far  as  it  is  represented  in 
Parliament,  is  hereby  responsible  for  acts  which 
make  atrocious  pollutionism  as  much  a  part  of 
England,  as  church,  monarchy,  and  education  are 

parts. 

This  is  what  is  called.   Endowment  of  Research. 
The  writer  beseeches  his  countrymen  to  watch  this 
serpent,  and  guard  the  vitals  of  the  nation  from  its 
way.     It  creeps  into  power  by  stealthy  accessions, 
the  stair  being  laid  down  in  the  existing  machinery 
of   the  State.      Its  acts    are  condoned  beforehand 
by  its  position.      To-day  it  is  a  new  field  of  dis- 
covery   reported.      To-morrow    it   is   a   society   of 
savans.     The  third  day  one  of  them  is  an  oflBcial 
with  a  secret  laboratory  at  his  back.     The  fourth 
day  he  is  in  relations  with  the  most  noble,  the  Privy 
Council,  and  the  fifth  day  he  is  of  it  and  in  it.     The 
sixth   day   he   sits  upon  the  medical   throne,  and 
does  what  he  likes,  and   can  do  no  wrong.      And 
the  seventh  day  he  rests  from  personal  labours,  and 


i. 


574    TIl£  ROYAL  COMMISSION  ON  VIVISECTION. 

hands  all  disobedient  subjects,  men  and  women,  to 
the  civil  power  which  is  his  slave.  This  epitomizes 
what  has  happened  in  the  vaccination  laws,  and  is 
the  forecast  of  much  else  that  will  happen  unless 
electoral  England  steadily  opposes  its  breast  to  all 
''  endowment  of  research." 

Research  there  has  been,  and  will  be  in  plenty, 
and  the  good  part  of  it  needs  no  endowment  but  that 
of  the  scientific  ardour  and  industry  of  the  private 
man,  and  the  voluntary  formation  of  societies  which 
from  the  ground  of  public  service,  and  by  virtuous 
means,  crave  support  from  the  people  at  large,  and 
get  it.  The  one  great  endowment  needed  at 
present,  and  which  cannot  be  had  while  scientism 
is  in  the  State,  is  the  existence  and  pressure  of  law, 
penal  law,  which  is  as  necessary  for  societies  as  for 
individuals,  and  without  which  life,  property  and 
decency  cannot  be  preserved  in  any  case.  Science, 
as  a  life,  a  property,  and  a  decency,  will  flourish 
when  it  is  hedged  in  by  this  common  beneficent 
safeguard.  The  object  is,  to  drive  villains  and 
marauders  away  from  science.  And  as  property  is 
protected  from  thieves  by  penal  laws,  so  by  its  own 
penal  laws  research  must  be  protected  from  infamy. 
Property  in  its  decorum  is  really  created  in  one 
sense  by  penal  laws  ;  and  science  must  be  similarly 
created.  "  Non  minus  jucundi  sunt  ii  dies  quibus 
conservamur  quam  ii  quibus  nascimur,'' 

This  Royal  Commission  also  marks  the  com- 
mencement of  the  usual  second  week  of  despotism 
after  the  first  already  epitomized.  It  sprang  from 
the  public  horror  aroused  by  violationism.  It  would 
flatter  the  horror.  For  this  purpose  it  endorses  in  a 
modified  sense  the  dogmas  and  pleas  of  the  violation- 
ists,  and  recommends  Parliament  to  bring  the  whole 


THE  ROYAL  COMMISSION  ON  VIVISECTION    575 

matter  under  State  control.  It  does  not  recommend 
that  it  be  cast  out  as  an  accursed  thing,  but  licensed; 
and  thus  exist  not  only  under  the  sanction  of  the 
Privy  Council,  but  issue  from  Parliament  as  the 
law  of  the  land.  This  is  the  last  stage  of  con- 
firmed violationism  ;  the  thin  end  of  its  whole 
wedge  in  the  heart  of  our  mother,  England.  True, 
it  is  to  be  restricted,  but  allowed.  And  it  is  to  be 
watched  by  a  paid  officialism  which  will  be  de- 
bauched by  its  sights  and  sounds. 

This  fixes  the  evil  for  a  time.  It  has  gone 
through  all  the  processes  of  confirmation,  and  its 
abettors  can  declare  that  every  reason  for  presently 
reopening  it,  is  at  an  end.  Parliament  is  weary  of 
it ;  and  it  may  require  years  of  agitation,  in  fact, 
now,  does  require  the  education  and  arousing  of  the 
whole  mind  of  the  country,  before  humane  repeal 
of  statutes  can  purge  the  gentle  weal.  Ah  !  why 
should  not  Parliaments  save  themselves  the  burden 
of  legislating  against  the  doubts  of  good  and  true 

men  ? 

Now,  beware,  dear  motherland,  of  the  "  endow- 
ment of  research." 

Suggestions  for  a  Bill  for  punishiiig  the  violation 
af  animal  life  ivhen  undertaken  for  alleged  purposes 
of  acquiring  hnoivledge,  or  promoting  good. 

It  is  suggested  that  no  addition  be  made  to  exist- 
ing legislation,  excepting  to  lay  down  a  scale  of 
penalties  rising  in  proportion  to  the  grievousness  of 
the  offence,  and  that  after  conviction,  offenders  shall 
be  struck  out  of  the  constituency  of  the  country. 

That  the  common  laws  against  cruelty  shall  be 
enforced  equally,  with  no  heed  to  the  pleading 
of  motives  for  cruelty;  and  that  common  juries 
shall  decide  the  case. 


•  < 


576    THE  ROYAL  COMMISSION  ON  VIVISECTION 

That  informers  shall  be  invited  by  sufficient 
rewards,  if  necessaiy,  by  high  rewards.  The  cost  to 
the  country  will  be  small,  because  the  system  of 
violation  will  not  outlast  more  than  a  few  convic- 
tions. That  purveyors  of  animals,  hospital  servants, 
laboratory  servants,  and  the  like,  shall  be  criminally 
indictable  if  they  are  accomplices  in  such  practices 
without  giving  information  to  the  police. 

That  right  of  search  in  hospitals,  laboratories,  and 
private  houses,  shall  be  provided  in  any  case  where 
suspicion  exists. 

That  books  detailinor  and  teachinof  violational 
experiments  shall  be  suppressed,  and  burnt  publicly, 
and  their  future  publication  be  forbidden  under 
penalties  ;  also  books  of  travel  and  adventure  de- 
tailing, and  figuring,  cruelties  of  sport. 

That  common  juries  shall  settle  the  question  of  the 
justification,  or  guilt,  of  each  violational  experiment; 
whereby  the  public  conscience  will  gradually  build 
up  precedents  for  a  general  law  against  cruelty  in 
the  country. 

That  legalizing,  or  as  it  is  called,  restricting, 
the  violation  of  life,  shall  be  avoided  ;  that  salaried 
inspectors,  who  would  be  a  permanent  charge  for 
continued  evil,  and  a  body  created  for  depravity,  be 
not  appointed ;  but  that  their  place  be  supplied  by 
informers  stimulated  by  adequate  rewards. 

That  institutions,  hospitals,  and  the  like,  shall  be 
dealt  with  by  compound  penalties  for  cruelty  prac- 
tised within  their  walls  ;  and  be  liable,  in  each  case, 
to  keep  an  informer  for  three  years,  to  be  reckoned 
on  the  staff. 

Remark — No  trumpey  cases  will  be  included  in 
condemnation  by  these  common  tribunals  of  the 
courts,  but  only  cruelty.     The  cruel  costermono-er 


DESTRUCTION  OF  REASON. 


577 


and  the  cruel  scientist  will  be  equal,  and  there  will 
be  one  law  against  inhumanity  for  the  rich  and  the 
poor ;  one  law  with  a  scale  of  penalties,  rising  for  all 
dire  cruelty  into  corporal  punishments. 

Violationism  in  Great  Britain  will  be  put  an  end 
to  in  a  twelvemonth  by  a  simple  Bill  carrying  the 
above  conditions. 


cxxxv. 


DESTRUCTION   OF   REASON. 

The  destruction  of  the  mind  as  a  power  of  reason 
is  a  characteristic  effect  of  the  violationists.  For,  in 
plea  for  the  greatest  atrocities,  they  allege  the 
most  childish  reasons.  Eed-handed  ApoUyons  first, 
they  put  on  the  face  and  garb  of  "  little  children " 
immediately  afterwards :  slipping  away  from  the 
indignant  world's  police  in  swaddling  clothes.  It  is 
a  memorable  chapter  of  psychology,  and  to  be  care- 
fully studied. 

Particulars  may  be  given  thus  far  without  out- 
raging decency.  Animals  are  violated,  and  then 
confined  in  close  vessels  for  days  afterwards.    Reason, 

to  demonstrate  the  effects  of  close  confinement. 

Animals  are  starved  to  death.  Reason,— to  show 
how  long  they  will  live  without  food.  Animals  are 
slowly  baked  to  death.  Reason,— io  show  what 
heat  will  bake  them  to  death.  Dogs  having  puppies 
are  cut  up  alive,  and  their  puppies  are  then  brought 
to  them.  Reason,— io  prove  the  endurance  of 
motherly  love.  The  deeds  and  reasons  can  be 
extended  indefinitely;  they  go  together  quite  through 

violationism ;  and  are  its  will  and  intellect. 

20 


578 


DESTRUCTION  OF  REASON. 


/ 


DESTR  UCTION  OF  REASON 


579 


Now  here,  in  these  reasons,  we  have  an  example 
of  the  quality  of  lusts  and  persuasions,  and  of  the 
destruction  of  the  human  being  by  them.     No  mind 
is  not  traversed  by  idiocy  that  has  one  such  reason 
in  it;  for  reason  is   a  faculty  commensurate  with 
importance  in  things,  and  here  is  a  gulf  of  incon- 
ceivable triviality  in  its  very  heart.     But  these  are 
the  reasons   of  red  hands  caught  in   the   act.     A 
recent  writer  says  that  they  ^'  paralyze  indignation." 
It  is   an   important   remark ;  and   the   fact   worth 
religious   investigation.     As  you  read   on  in  such 
statements,  the  mind  loses  its  upright  and  down- 
right  position,    nothing   is   right    or    wrong;    the 
smallest  excuse  justifies  everything  :  deicide  would 
be  right  if  it  would  make  a  man  a  baronet.     Now 
many  a  pointed  pretext  that  comes  to  a  man  s  mind 
is  not  a  seed,  but  a  stab.      Swedenborg  reports  that 
the  men   in   the   deepest   hells,  by  injecting  their 
persuasions,    have   this   power    of  paralyzing    and 
destroying   the   faculties;    and   that   therefore,    to 
guard  the  human  race,  these  spirits  are  separated, 
and  dwell  under  their  own   ''misty  rocks."     Their 
power  lies  in  assaulting  reason,  and  througJi  reason, 
wisdom  and  love,  by  infernal  loves,  the  smallness  of 
whose  intellect  forced  home  is  like  the  point  of  a 
dagger;  so  sharp  as  to  be  invisible,  but  with  the 
bold  arm  and  naked  stroke  of  determined  evil  behind 
it.     In  such  case  if  once  you  entertain  the  proffered 
reason,  instead     of    casting    out    reason    and    sin 
together,  the   mind  is  a  fool  straightway,  and  as 
with    the    mentally   destroyed   violationists   them- 
selves, you  are  landed  in  an  inquest  in  which  the 
entire  realm  of  right  and  wrong  is  in  royal  com- 
mission.   The  good  and  truth  of  a  man  are  done  for, 
then. 


This  state  has  overtaken  churches  as  collective 
bodies  :  they  are  shaking  palsies  before  public  evil. 
Confronted  by  manifest  heinous  wickedness,  when 
you  ask  your   clerical  brother,  himself  a  virtuous 
man,  and  an  earnest  worker  for  good  in  the  church- 
sense,  why  the  Church  does  not  intervene,  and  by  its 
clear  voice  put  down  violationism  and  its  kindred  in 
a  month, — which  it  could   do, — he  tells  you   that 
diversity   of  opinion   prevails,    and    that    eminent 
witnesses  come  close  to  the  ear  of  Church  and  State, 
and  speak  with  authority  in  favour  of  the  practices  ; 
and  that  he  does  not  know  what  to  think,  or  do. 
Here  the  Church  is  traversed  by  the  world,  the  flesh 
and  the  devil.      Its  plea  is  that  it  has  no  command- 
ing intuitions  of  what  is  good  and  true  in  its  own 
heart ;  no  Sinai  in  its  borders ;  that  it  has  to  learn 
what  is  sin,  and  what  is  not  sin,  at  second  hand,  from 
specialists   and  scientists.     Such   a  church  has  no 
defending  reasons  for  the  faith  of  love  that  should  be 
in  it ;  it  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  hells,  and  cannot  do 
battle  with  their  influx  ;  it  is  hustled  about  among 
the  trivialities  which  are  their  pretexts  for  wrong. 

This  subject  is  deep  and  pressing.  The  reader  is 
especially  invited  to  study  the  effect  of  pretexts  for 
plain  wrong  on  the  human  reason.  The  sin  and  its 
reason  together  are  a  kind  of  chemical,  what  is 
called  an  ''  unstable  compound  ; "  and  taken  into  the 
mind  on  the  mild  side  of  the  pretext,  the  formula 
then  breaks  up  internally,  and  the  evil  is  left  to 
explode  and  destroy  in  the  faculties.  This  is  of  the 
nature  of  lust  itself,  the  smallness  of  whose  pretexts, 
pushed  by  its  whole  body  from  behind,  gains  it 
easier  admission ;  the  defences  of  the  honest  person 
being  paralyzed  by  its  audacity,  which  carries  the 
full  influx  of  its  dynamite  hell. 


I 


S8o 


UNALTERABLE  BY  PR  A  YER. 


CXXXVI. 


UNALTERABLE   BY   PRAYER. 


The  following  account  of  a  scientific  god,  "  unalter- 
able by  prayer,"  and  probably  "the  same  yesterday, 
to-day,  and  for  ever,"  occurs  in  the  "  Eeport  of  the 
Royal   Commission  on  Vivisection."     The  animals 
mentioned  were  being  starved  to  death  to  find  out 
the  truths  of  starvation.     Dr.  "Walker  says,  "  I  used 
to  dine  very  often  with  a  lecturer  on  physiology,  and 
one  night  I  found  that  I  could  not  enjoy  either  my 
cigar  or  my  dinner,  because  the  day  before  we  had 
g'one  through  the  '  laboratory,'  and  I  could  not  get 
rid  of  the  imploring  look  of  the  dogs  which  hoped 
for  some  food  every  time  that  they  saw  a  human 
being,  of  the  patient  suffering  of  the  fowls,  and  of 
the  desperate  eflforts  made  by  some  rabbits  to  allay 
the  pangs  of  hunger  with  anything  to  engage  the 
digestion;  and  it  appeared  to  me  that  my  friend  was 
indifferent.     He  had  been  a  vivisector  some  years;  I 
was  a  beginner"  (4908). 


CXXXVI  I. 

THE   CATECHISM   OF   THE   GALLOWS. 

There  is  a  passage  in  S^mund's  Edda  which  bears 
upon  the  relation  of  outward  crime  to  the  state  and 
constitution  of  the  world.  Odin  is  represented  as  con- 
sulting dead  bodies  which  hang  upon  the  gallows. 
The  extract  from  Hdvamdl,  the  "  Verse  of  the  High 
One,"  can  hardly  be  read  by  the  Christian  believer 


THE  CATECHISM  OF  THE  GALLOWS.        581 

without  a  thought  arising  that  the  Lord's  passion  is 
intended.  At  the  same  time,  as  it  is  one  of  0dm  s 
methods  of  experience  to  divine  a  posteriori  from  the 
ends  of  crime,  we  see  that  the  circulation  of  evil 
through  the  body  of  society  is  involved;  for  every 
gallows  man  is  an  outward  spot  and  visible  symptom 
of  the  condition  of  human  nature;  and  Odin  descend- 
ing to  him,  and  becoming  his  catechist,  is  a  psycho- 
logical necessity  of  knowing  the  truth. 

The  hanging  malefactor  read  backwards  and  m- 
wards,  signffies  coi^p  d'itat  and  saviourship  of  society 
in  emperors,  inquisition  and  compulsory  savmg  ot 
souls  by  fire  and  rack  in  churches,  blood  revels  m 
democracies,  rights  of  violation  in  science,  rights  of 
wrong  in  property  and  testaments;  and  rights  ot 
lusts  in  all  men.     These  institutes,  however,  are  so 
clothed  with  purple,  and   lawn,  and    ermine,    and 
laurels,  that  they  are  invisible  in  the  crime-series : 
the  devil  has  successfully  juggled  in  them;  and  the 
felon,  swinging  on  high,  is  the  little  terminal  drop  of 
gout  which  is  visible,  and  which,  to  Odin,  sigmfies 
them  all.     The  grandeurs  of  evil  do  not  look  like  the 
felon  now,  but  they  are  him  at  last. 

The  following  contains  the  passage  from  Edda  :— 
«  O^inn  was  called  Hanga-guS  and  Hanga-drottmn 
(from  Hangi,  a  body  hanging  on  the  gallows),  the 
god  and  lord  of  gallows  men,-gallows  birds.  It 
is  thus  explained  in  the  Ynglinga  Saga  of  Heims- 
kringla,  chapt.  7th.  '  Sometimes  OSinn  called  up 
dead  men  out  of  the  earth,  or  placed  himself  beneath 
the  gallows  men  ;  therefore  he  was  called  the  lord  ot 
ghosts,  or  of  gallows  men.'  From  the  context  it 
may  be  seen  that  his  purpose  was  to  seek  mysterious 
knowledge  from  them. 

"According  to  the  first  stanza  of  the  'Runatals 


/ 


S82        THE  CATECHISM  OF  THE  GALLOWS. 

Mttr  OSins '  in  H^vamdl,  6Sinn  was  also  himself 
the  gallows  man — 

Veit  ek  at  ek  hekk, 

vindga  meiSi  a, 

ni3etr  allar  nfu, 

geiri  undaSr, 

ok  gefinn  OSni, 

sjilfr  sjd.lfum  mer, 

^  J'eim  meiSi, 

er  manngi  veit, 

hvers  liann  af  rotum  renn, 


I  know  that  I  hung 
on  a  wind-beaten  tree 
nine  whole  nights, 
wounded  with  a  spear 
and  given  to  6Sinn, 
myself  to  myself, 
on  that  tree 
that  no  man  knoweth 
from  what  roots  it  ran. 


"  Some  have  taken  this  stanza  as  a  symbol  corres- 
ponding to  the  crucifixion  of  the  Lord.     However 
that  may  be,  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  mean- 
ing IS  somewhat  to  this  effect,  that  OSiim  by  com- 
plete  self-sacrifice,    by   giving  up   self  entirely,  is 
enabled   to   penetrate   into  the  innermost   recesses 
of  creation,   and   to  draw    hidden  wisdom  thence 
Ihe  tree  referred  to,  is  undoubtedly  the  world-tree 
Yggdrasill,  which  derives  its  name  from  this  very 
tradition  (Yggr  =  OSinn;  drasill  =  horse:   OSinn's 
horse,  i.e.  the  tree  on  which  OSinn  rides).     This 
tree  was  by  ancient  Northmen  looked  upon  as  a 
symbol  of  nature,  the  extent  and  ramifications  of 
which  are  beyond  human  ken.    Therefore,  '  No  man 
knoweth  from  what  roots  it  ran'"  (J6n  A.  Hjaltalin). 
iVb^e.— Yggr  is  a  name  of  Odin   derived  from 
terror,    caution,    shuddering,   akin   to   the   English 
interjection.  Ugh !     Odin's  castle  or  horg  is  Hlid- 
SKJALF ;  the  shaking  or  quivering  portal ;  the  gate 
of  vibration.     He  inhabits  a  sensitiveness  interior  to 
things ;  resides  in  the  sun  of  vibrations  or  trembles, 
and  cons  the  universe  thereby ;  and  is  in  the  focus 
of  apperception  of  good  and  evil.     Yggdrasill  is 


THE  CATECHISM  OF  THE  GALLOWS.        583 

the  horse  of  vibration,  upon  the  back  or  practical 
understanding   of  which  the    infinite    mtelligence 
rides.     This  is  the  sensory  side  of  Yggr.     On  the 
motory   side,    Odin,   Yggr,   the   perceiver    of    the 
tremors    which   in  the  inmost  brain  stand  for  all 
thino-s,  is  the  cause  and  issuer  of  vibrations,  terrors 
from"  this  point  of  view  :  Odin  as  will-force  being 
teTTiUlis,  tremendous.     A  middle  or  mediative  posi- 
tion is  necessary.     And  to  capacitate  him  for  know- 
ing and  penetrating  the  evil  universe  of  men,  to  the 
makino-  of  which  he  is   alien,   he  hangs  on   their 
gallowl,  and  takes,  or  senses,  all  evil  whatever  of 
which  the  gallows  is  the  end;  in  short  penetrates 
universal  hell ;  and  by  self-imposed  degradation  fills 
the  outward  or  human  Odin  with  obedience  to,  and 
perception  from,  the  inmost  or  divine  Odin  ^ 

We  are  here  again  reminded  of  Swedenborgs 
definition  of  the  soulin  the  cortical  substances  of  the 
brain  ;  it  is  constituted,  he  says,  by  the  divine  hand, 
"in  the  representation  of  the  universe,  in  the 
intuition  of  ends,  in  the  beginning  of  determina- 
tions •  "  it  is  a  man  with  corresponding  senses  and 
muscles  that  lives  as  its  own  special  form  m  the 
palace  of  vibration. 

Gentle  reader,  try  to  perceive  here.  Observe  the 
constant  import  of  the  doctrine  of  the  assumption  ot 
forms,  and  the  number  of  points  which  are  co- 
ordinates of  this  doctrine.  Odin  is  upon  the  gallows 
nine  nights,-the  text  says,  "  all  nine  nights,  - 
because  in  Edda  there  are  nine  worlds^and  nine 
trees  in  the  world-tree,  Yggdrasill.  Hereby  he 
assumes  the  form,  and  therefore  takes  on  him  the 
state,  of  the  evil  in  all  those  worlds  ;  receives  it  by 
temptation  or  induction,  because  he  is  already  m  its 
form  ;  its  vibrations  reach  him  as  a  divine  human 


( 


S84        THE  CATECHISM  OF  THE  GALLOWS. 

knower,  balancer,  and  determiner ;  and  afterwards 
not  merely  as  a  god,  but  as  a  man,  he  judges  what 
IS  in  men.  *' 

Practical  parallels.—This  nation,  so  far  as  there 
IS  good  m  It,  IS  now  voluntarily  hanging  on  the 
gallows  of  violationism,  vaccinationism,  and  other 
great  evils  of  the  time  of  which  it  is  forced  to  be 
the  representative  and  the  judge:  and  only  by  its 
cruel  crucifixion  knows  their  agonies  for  what  they 
are,   and  afterwards  has  capacity   of  victory   over 
them.     No  good  Lord  Shaftesbury  can  divine  these 
things,  for  they  are  out  of  his  very  nature,  unless  he 
mounts  their  cross,  and  freely  submits,  as  he  does 
submit,  to  be  tortured  by  them. 

In  short,  it  is  become  a  rational  rule,  that  for 
carrying  any  great  cause,  the  assumption  of  an  evil 
humanity,  that  is,  of  a  flesh  that  does  not  belong  to 
him,  must  be  undertaken  by  the  reformer,  in  order 
that  he  may  enter  its  sphere  thoroughly;  and  there 
know,  fight,  and  conquer, 

Moral—It  is  indispensable  to  the  scientific  man 
to  live  m  the  centre  of  vibrations,  and  to  have  their 
porches  for  his  senses ;  to  receive  and  to  hear,  and 
worthily  to  listen,  to  messages  from  all  things,  and 
dwelling  with  God  in  prayer,  to  transmit  motives 
ot  good  to  all  things.  Science  and  physiology  are 
impossible,  if  there  is  no  responsive  tenderness  in 
the  man,— if  the  heart  is  a  stone,  and  the  brain  a 
seit-made  fungus. 

This  Eddaic  Word,  like  many  of  the  dark  sayings 
of  the  Northern  Mythology,  has  therefore  a  physio- 
logical, social,  and  spiritual  scope.  But  it  can  be 
read  only  by  the  light  of  the  revealed  spiritual  sense 
^,i  ^  o^*'*'"^  ^°^  Christian  Scriptures,  as  un- 
folded by  Swedenborg.      The  learned  co-ordinate  of 


il 


-X 


i 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  FORMS  OF  LIFE,    585 

protoplasm  called  ''Comparative  Mythology,"  has 
no  hold  in  these  depths,  but  empties  their  values  on 
the  common  ground  of  materialism,  where  they 
rank  as  the  curiosities  of  the  world's  childhood. 
There  is  no  standard  of  comparison  or  point  of 
departure  in  this  science,  but  it  is  a  wheel  that  rolls 
round  in  useless  analogies.  And  its  radical  object 
seems  to  be,  to  level  down  the  Word  of  the  Lord  to 
the  brutish  things  of  heathenism,  and  to  make  a 
pantheon  in  which  learning  is  the  principal  divinity. 


CXXXVIII. 

THE   SACREDNESS   OF   FORMS    OF   LIFE. 

The  greater  evil  is  cruelty,  the  lesser  evil  is  pain, 
and  there  can  be  dire  cruelty  where  there  is  no  pam.^ 
The  end  of  repression  is  not  "  the  economy  of  pain," 
but  the  casting  out  of  cruelty. 

In  the  contest  between  the  violationists  and  the 
conscience  of  the  country,  the  issue  is  raised,  that 
dissecting  and  injuring  living  animals  is  not  cruel  if 
no  pain  is  inflicted ;  that  is  to  say,  if  chloroform 
is  employed,  and  if  life  is  put  an  end  to  before 
feeling  returns.  This  position  leads  strictly  to  the 
violation  of  the  human  race.  Its  truth  is  here 
denied.  The  infliction  of  pain  does  not  of  itself 
constitute  cruelty  ;  pain  is  no  siimmum  malum;  it 
is  often  necessary,  beneficial,  and  merciful.  Execu- 
tive justice  is  attended  with  pain,  both  in  anticipa- 
tion, and  in  fact;  and  surgery  in  like  manner 
always  involves  pain.  There  is  no  cruelty  in  the 
hand  that  inflicts  the  pain,  provided  it  must  be 
undergone,  because  the  law  and  motive  of  human 


* 


4 


586      THE  SACREDNESS  OF  FORMS  OF  LIFE. 

service  inspire  and  govern  the  hand.  The  motive 
of  good  is  clear  and  direct,  and  the  patient  willino-. 
The  case  is  altered  if  violence  be  inflicted  for  specu- 
lative reasons,  for  a  pretended  remote  good,  and 
without  the  consent  of  the  sufferers.  Cruelty  is 
there  made  out,  and  if  useful  information  comes  of 
it,  that  by  no  means  justifies  the  cruelty ;  and  does 
not  show  that  the  same  or  better  facts  could  not  be 
elicited  by  lawful  ways,  especially  if  the  evil  ways 
were  resolutely  forbidden  :  it  establishes  no  right  to 
the  facts.  This  has  been  dwelt  upon  at  length  in 
the  foregoing  pages ;  but  the  report  of  the  Eoyal 
Commission  reopens  it  here. 

Extinction   of   pain    and    of  all   feeling    in    the 
victims,    not    only    fails    to    abolish    cruelty,    but 
gives  it  a  new  depth  and  extension,  and  drugs  the 
opposing  conscience.     In  the  first  place  the  "^viola- 
tion extinguishes   lives   that  need    not    be     extin- 
guished, or  if  the  creatures  must  be  killed,  a  momen- 
taneous  death  effects  that  end.     The  next  matter  is, 
that  the  violationists,  voluntarily,  at  no  man  s  solici- 
tation,   for   no   direct    good,    with    pretexts    only, 
accustom  themselves  to  the  most  horrible  sights,  to 
all  that  betokens  intimate  agony  of  nature,  and  feed 
their  minds  upon  it  as  a  daily  food.     They  become 
so  inured  to  every  form  of  violation  of  life,  that  the 
addition  of  sensation  to  that  life  makes  no  difference 
in  their  proceedings.     They  did  these  things  before 
chloroform   existed,   and  would   do  them  again   if 
anaesthetics   were  a  lost  art.     Violationism  is  not 
less  but  more  a  vampire  because  with  skilful  beat- 
ing wings  it  intoxicates  the  life  which  it  despoils. 
And  in  the  circulation  of  evils  and  falses  it  here  puts 
itself  upon  the  rail  of  all  crimes  against  the  human 
race.     The  seducer  and  violator  who  effects  his  pur- 


i 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  FORMS  OF  LIFE.     587 

pose  upon  his  victim  under  stupefaction,  and  then 
murders  her  in  its  dire  sleep,  is  not  excused  by  the 
plea  of  her  insensibility  and  her  murder,  although 
these  have  taken  away  from  the  person  all  conscious- 
ness of  pain  and  injury.       The  offence  is  aggravated 
by  both  operations.      The  reason  is  that  the  viola- 
tion, the  drugging,  and  the  murder,  are  all   real  ; 
first  for  the  dead  ;  second  for  the  violationist ;  and 
third  for  society,  which  is  violated  thrice  in  the  pro- 
cess.    And  if  all  the  human  race  were  automatons 
excepting  one  scientific  man,  and  he  by  special  reve- 
lation from  his  selfhood  knew  such  to  be  the  fact,  and 
if  he  cut  up  his  pseudo  fellow-creatures  to  peruse 
their  insides,  he  would  be  a  demon  from  his  own 
delights  of  sight  and  sound  and  touch,  though  pain 
were  unknown  in  the  universe ;  because  to  feed  on 
the  forms  of  pain  artificially  engendered,  is  mentally 
devilish,  and  also  has  the  substance  of  pain  in  its  lust. 
This  subject,  namely,  the  nature  of  cruelty,  and 
its  co-ordination  with  all  forms  of  disrespect,  inde- 
cency, violation,  and  abomination,  was  until  lately 
an  easy  matter  to    understand  ;    but   the  vampire 
schools  of  philosophy  and  practice  have  so  confused 
it,    that   a   plain   man,   even  a  churchman,  hardly 
knows    now    what    cruelty   means.      A    gallows - 
catechism  is  needed  to  bring  back  the  subject   to  its 
rights.     And  this  will  show,  that  the  violation  of 
the  forms  of  life,  as  forms,  is  heinous  wickedness. 
That  it  destroys   human    society,   which  from   the 
basis  is  founded  upon  forms.      That  desecration  of 
living  forms  touches  every  breach  of  nature  and  love. 
That'^it  is  inhabited  by  the  spirits  of  destruction, 
and  especially  by  destruction  of  the  image  of  God 
in  man.     This  is  attested  in  human  life  by  analogous 
examples,  in   which   the  pain  of  the  subject  mal- 


588      THE  SACREDNESS  OF  FORMS  OF  LIFE, 

treated  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  case  :  it  is  the 
mind  of  the  destroyer  which  is  alone  in  question. 
A  man  desecrates  a  church,  tears  or  abuses  a  Bible, 
dishonours  the  form  of  a  departed  wife,  defiles  the 
name  of  a    dead  friend,  mocks  an   infant's  voice; 
profanes  childhood  by  turning  its  wonderland  into 
ridicule,  or  breaks  the  purpose  and  mind  of  litera- 
ture into  idle  words  for  a  pastime  ;  these   are  his 
victims  ;  but  they  are  beyond  his  immediate  power 
to  pain ;  and  yet  he  pollutes,  defiles,  violates,  and 
IS  cruel ;  because  in  each  case  the  form  is  sacred,  and 
carries  the  heart  and  virtue  of  a  life  in  it.     And  so 
he  who  violates  forms  dear  to  life,  and  dear  to  the 
best   honours   of  society,   violates   substances,    and 
descends  the  stair  which  leads  by  steps  with  many 
names  from  common  cruelty  to  abomination.     And 
because  forms  as  forms  are  of  the  heart  of  the  world, 
and  in  their  places  collectively  are  the  creation,  so 
the  ApoUyon  and  abominator  of  forms  is  in  very 
definition  a  miscreant ;  and  if  he  acts  on  a  law,  he  is 
a  miscreant  of  intellect ;  and  if  he  is  restricted  and 
licensed  by  Parliament,  he  is  a  miscreant  of  institu- 
tion in  a  government-factory  of  miscreants. 

Violations  of  form  torture  society,  which  is  a  sign 
of  their  intimate  wrong.  There  are  at  this  moment 
m  England  myriads  of  men  and  women  whose  nights 
and  days  are  embittered  by  the  cruelties  of  the 
scientists ;  no  anaesthetic  plea  can  calm  them  ;  from 
the  royal  lady  downward  they  are  wakeful  under  the 
horror.  The  abominators  of  form  are  therefore 
social  torturers  on  a  large  scale ;  just  as  the  vacci- 
nationist government  profoundly  tortures  all  fathers 
and  mothers  who  disapprove  of  vaccination,  but  are 
forced  to  submit  to  it ;— tortures  both  their  affections 
and  their  consciences.     In  this  fact,  as  on  a  broad 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  FORMS  OF  LIFE,     589 

canvas  illuminated  by  healthy  natural  affection,  you 
read  the  nature  of  the  deeds  that  are  done  on  uncon- 
scious infants  and  insentient  beasts. 

Do  not  quail  here  before  any  sneers  at  good  affec- 
tions as  the  most  powerful  of  arguments.  Some  men 
try  to  resolve  the  affections  into  silliness  of  softness, 
and  to  transact  an  existence  without  them  ;  whereas 
they  are  the  full  beating  arteries  of  love  hard  with 
the  blood  of  life,  and  running  with  the  true  genius  of 

legislation. 

It  may  here  be  remarked,  that  all  animals  stand 
under  Christ's  shield  of  protection  from  cruelty :  a 
humane  man  will  no  more  torture  a  rattlesnake  or  a 
scorpion  or  a  rat  than  a  horse  or  a  cow  or  an  elephant; 
the  evil,  being  in  the  man,  the  quality  would  be  the 
same  :  right  of  extinction  has  in  no  case  any  com- 
merce with  right  of  torture.  A  scorpion  as  a  form  of 
life  is  sacred, — against  violation  or  torture  :  as  an 
evil  beast  it  is  amenable  to  instantaneous  execution. 
These  are  clear  principles, — if  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment could  understand  them. 

In  finally  quitting  this  subject,  and  praying  for 
militant  light   on  it,  the  reader  is  invited  to  re- 
member, that  form  is  the  vessel  which  contains  the 
lives  and  represents  the  truths  of  the  creation ;  that 
it  is  the  substance  and  fact  of  intellect ;  and  that 
through  memory  it  is  the  image  and  likeness  that 
affecti'on   places  for  every   creature  in  the  mental 
chambers.      To  see  the  import  of  this,  form  must  be 
studied  in    the   light   of  the   Doctrine   of  Corres- 
pondences as  given  from  Swedenborg  in  these  pages  ; 
a  doctrine  and  a  consideration  omitted  at  present 
from  the  physiological  mind.      It  will  be  found  that 
this  doctrine  is  again  a  practical  one ;  nay,  is  a  con- 
science-policeman in  its  power  of  arresting  profaners 


590  THE  SACREDNESS  OF  FORMS  OF  LIFE. 
and  violators  who  say  they  are  doing  no  harm 
because  they  have  drugged  their  victims  The 
torturers  of  lambs  are  torturers  of  innocence,  because 
of  what  they  do  to  the/om.  The  torturers  of  any 
form  of  life  torture  the  life.  In  this  they  are  not 
only  abommators  of  form,  but  haters  of  nature  ;  and 
the  violationist  school  is  misozoic,  life-hating  •  in 
contmuation  of  that  which  it  also  is,  mimnthrolic  or 
an  enemy  of  mankind.  ' 

Can  the  gentle  reader  expect  grapes  from  these 
thorns,  and  figs  from  these  thistles  :  sciences  of  heal- 
mg,  understanding  of  man  and  nature,  wisdom  for 
the  private  home  and  the  body  of  society,  welling 
from  these  springs?  Then  is  the  sun  of  human  lovf 
sackcloth  b  ack  as  hair,"  and  to  be  taken  no  account 
ot  in  the  day  s  works  of  men. 

Finally,  for  any  Christians  who  have  been  thouffht- 
kss  partakers  in  the  abominations  and  atheilmS 
mentioned  m  this  book,  the  time  for  sharp  separation 
from  these  things  has  come ;  Judgment  in  events  is 
about  to  commence  ;  and  men  will  know  henceforth 
and  are  bound  to  know,  that  the  Forms  of  Life  are 
the  seals  of  the  whole  creation ;  and  that  those  who 
ot  settled  purpose,  on  pretences,  break  them  open  to 
enjoy  hidden  mysteries,  are  violators  not  only  of  the 
works  but  of  the  Word  of  the  Almighty 


THE   END. 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 


ariR  AHB  PAIERSON,  PRINTERS,  EDWBOBOB. 


Second  Editimi,  erown  800,  cloth,  5is. 

The   Human   Body, 

AND  ITS  CONNEXION  WITH  MAN. 
Post  SvOj  doth,  58. 

Emanuel  Swedenbor^: 

A  BIOGEAPHT. 


Post  8vo,  2s. 
A  POPULAR  SKETCH  OF 

Swedenbor^'s  Philosophical  Works. 

Svo,  Is, 

Compulsory  Vaccination : 

ITS  WICKEDNESS  TO  THE  POOR. 

SvOf  Is, 

A  Free  State  and  Free  Medicine. 


Post  Svo, 

Science  for  All. 


JAMES  SPEIES,  36  Bloomsbury  Street,  London; 


TRANSLATIONS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 


Two  vols.  8vo,  20s. 

The  Animal  Kingdom,  considered  Ana- 
tomically, Physically,  and  Philosophically. 

By  EMANUEL  SWEDENBORG. 

One  vol.  8vo,  2s.  6d. 

Outlines  of  a  Philosophical  Argument 

on  the  Infinite,  and  the  Final  Cause  of  Crea- 
tion; and  on  the  Intercourse  between  the  Soul 
and  the  Body. 

By  EMANUEL  SWEDENBORG. 
8^0,  2s.  Gd, 

Posthumous  Tracts  on  Philosophical 

Subjects, 

By  EMANUEL  SWEDENBORG. 
SvOj  sewed,  Is. 

A  Hieroglyphic  Key  to  Natural  and 

Spiritual  Mysteries  by  way  of  Representations 
and  Correspondences. 

By  EMANUEL  SWEDENBORG. 


JAMES  SPEIRS,  36  Bloomsbury  Street,  London. 


vr.-. 


K 


,r,M 


3    1943 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERS 


0025983180 


TY 


936.94       Sw33^4 


Wilkinson 

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